Chewing a piece of gum made from specially grown beans cut a key cancer-linked virus by 93 percent in patients with head and neck tumors, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania.
The gum is the work of Henry Daniell and his team at Penn's School of Dental Medicine in Philadelphia. Using beans called lablab that naturally produce an antiviral protein called FRIL, the researchers found that just one dose dramatically reduced HPV in the saliva and oral rinse of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, the most common kind of tumor in those areas. HPV dropped by 93 percent in saliva and 80 percent in rinse samples.
The problem is enormous. Lip and oral cavity cancer ranked as the seventh leading cancer worldwide in both how often it occurs and how many people it kills among teenagers, young adults, and middle-aged adults in 2022. Head and neck cancer is often caught late, and survival rates have barely budged in recent years despite new drugs. HPV drives much of this rise. "The global increase in oropharyngeal cancer is linked to HPV infection," Daniell said.
Two bacteria make things even worse: Porphyromonas gingivalis and Fusobacterium nucleatum. Daniell's team loaded the gum with an extra ingredient called protegrin, an antimicrobial peptide. A single dose brought both bacteria down to nearly undetectable levels.
Here is what matters most about the gum: it left the good bacteria alone. Standard radiation treatment for head and neck cancer wipes out helpful mouth microbes and creates conditions for a harmful yeast called Candida albicans to take hold. The bean gum avoided that destruction. That means patients could potentially use it alongside their existing treatment without making their microbial situation worse.
"Our findings support the value of advancing these therapies to clinical trials as adjuvants with current treatments or as prophylaxis to prevent infection and transmission," Daniell said.
The team sees two paths forward. The gum could work as an add-on to standard cancer care, fighting HPV and harmful bacteria while patients undergo radiation or surgery. Or it could someday become a preventive tool, stopping HPV infection before it starts. The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports. Before any of that happens, the treatment must go through clinical trials in real patients, which is the next step.
For now, the early results offer a quiet kind of hope: a plant-based gum, made from beans, doing something powerful against tumors that have long frustrated doctors and devastated patients.