The research team was led by Henry Daniell of the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings were published in Scientific Reports and could support the development of more accessible and affordable treatments.

A Need for Better Head and Neck Cancer Therapies

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a common form of cancer that begins in the tissues lining the mouth and throat. The disease can be particularly aggressive, and outcomes are often poor when it is discovered at a later stage.

Daniell says that many recently approved cancer medications have not produced major improvements in patients’ quality of life or five-year survival. That limited progress highlights the need for new approaches that can work alongside existing treatments.

Targeting HPV and Harmful Oral Bacteria

The new study builds on earlier research involving chewing gum made from lablab beans (bean gum). The gum contains FRIL, a naturally occurring antiviral protein.

Daniell and his colleagues used oral samples from patients with HNSCC to study three microbes associated with cancer. These included human papillomavirus, or HPV, along with two bacterial species, Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg) and Fusobacterium nucleatum (Fn).

“The global increase in oropharyngeal cancer is linked to HPV infection,” says Daniell. “And Pg and Fn infections worsen survival rates of untreated recurrent or metastatic oral cancer, even after surgery and risk-adjusted adjuvant, or supplemental, therapies.”

Gum Extracts Sharply Reduce Microbe Levels

Tests showed that extracts from the bean gum lowered HPV levels by 93% in saliva samples. HPV levels also fell by 80% in oral rinse samples.

The researchers then engineered the bean gum to contain protegrin, an antimicrobial peptide capable of killing harmful bacteria. A single dose brought levels of Pg and Fn down to almost zero.

Importantly, the treatment did not appear to harm the beneficial bacteria that normally live in the mouth. Radiation therapy can have a different effect, reducing helpful bacteria while encouraging the growth of disease-causing yeast (Candida albicans).

A Potential Addition to Cancer Treatment

The ability to target dangerous microbes while preserving the healthy oral microbiome could make the gum useful in several ways. Researchers believe it may eventually serve as an additional therapy alongside current cancer treatments or as a preventive measure against infection and transmission.

“Lip and oral cavity cancer was the seventh leading cancer type in cancer incidence and mortality rate worldwide in adolescents, young adults, and middle-aged adults in 2022,” says Daniell. “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.”

Henry Daniell is the W.D. Miller Professor in the Department of Basic & Translational Sciences at the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Other authors include Geetanjali Wakade, Rahul Singh, and Smruti Nair of Penn Dental Medicine; Andrés M. Bur and Sufi M. Thomas of the University of Kansas Medical Center; Eri S. Srivatsan and Marilene B. Wang of the University of California at Los Angeles; and Saroj K. Basak of the Veterans Administration Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.

The research received support from NIH (grant 5-R01-HL 107904-13 awarded to Henry Daniell), the Academic Senate Grant of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (the Surgical Education Research program), and the National Cancer Institute Cancer Center (Support Grant P30 CA168524).

Whether associated with the deadly reputation of the Black Widow or the fictional bite that transformed Spider-Man, fangs have become one of the most recognizable features of spiders. Their evolutionary story, however, began long before modern spiders appeared.

A new study published in Nature traces the origins of this powerful hunting tool to Urokodia, a small marine creature that lived during the early Cambrian Period.

The Ancient Origins of Spider Fangs

Spiders belong to a large group of invertebrates called chelicerates, which also includes scorpions and ticks. More than 100,000 chelicerate species have been described.

These animals have jointed limbs and hard external skeletons. Their defining feature is a pair of specialized appendages called chelicerae, located near the front of the body. Depending on the species, chelicerae can function as pincers or fangs that grip, pierce, or stab prey.

Urokodia fossils were discovered at the renowned Chengjiang fossil site in Yunnan Province in southern China. The study was published on the 42nd anniversary of the site’s discovery.

The creature measured only around 2-3 cm in length. It had large eyes extending from stalks at the front of its body, along with a segmented skeleton and jointed limbs attached beneath its narrow frame. Its appearance bears little obvious resemblance to the spiders and scorpions that descended from its broader evolutionary lineage.

X-Rays Reveal Preserved Soft Anatomy

Researchers from Yunnan University, China, and the University of Leicester used X-ray technology to examine the rock surrounding the fossil. The scans revealed that much of the animal’s soft anatomy had remained preserved in a mummified state for hundreds of millions of years.

Most importantly, the researchers identified two pincer-like appendages positioned just behind the creature’s eyes. These structures represent an early form of chelicerae and provide evidence of the evolutionary beginnings of the pincers and fangs seen in chelicerates today.

The fossil also preserves features on Urokodia‘s legs that may have served as book gills, allowing the animal to breathe underwater. Similar respiratory structures are still found in aquatic chelicerates such as horseshoe crabs.

A Successful Lineage of Hunters

Chelicerates have become one of the most successful animal groups in both marine and terrestrial environments. Those that moved onto land developed into highly effective predators, and fossils show that their ancestors had already been hunting for hundreds of millions of years.

Despite the frightening image of spiders presented in movies such as Arachnophobia, most species pose no danger to people. Their venom and bites evolved to subdue prey that is far smaller than a human.

The research was led by Professor Yu Liu of Yunnan University, who is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester.

Professor Liu said: “We were using X-ray tomography analysis of these fossils to reveal their soft anatomy buried in the rocks for hundreds of millions of years, when suddenly we noticed the pincer-like limbs at the front of the animal. We knew immediately that this was a very exciting fossil and indeed a distant ancestor of living chelicerates like scorpions and spiders.”

A Window Into the Dawn of Animal Life

Urokodia lived within a rich marine ecosystem during a crucial period in the history of animal evolution. The Chengjiang fossils preserve evidence of more than 200 types of animals that inhabited the oceans over 500 million years ago.

Co-author Professor Mark Williams from the University of Leicester School of Geography, Geology and the Environment said: “Urokodia was part of an ancient ecosystem of over 200 different types of animals living in the seas over 500 million years ago. These spectacularly preserved fossils provide real insights into how life was evolving on our planet at the very dawn of animals.”

This study was supported by a grant from the Department of Science and Technology of Yunnan Province (202401BC070012) to Professor Yu Liu, who is further funded by the Yunnan Revitalization Talent Support Program.

The result also marks progress toward using hydrogen for cleaner energy production. Unlike natural gas, hydrogen can be produced using renewable energy sources. Earlier this year, the KIT team also became the first to generate electricity with a hydrogen gas turbine that does not rely on a mechanical compressor.

Hydrogen Turbine Runs for More Than Five Minutes

Earlier experiments could continue for only fractions of a second because longer operation would cause the combustion chambers to melt. The new test extended the operating time to more than five minutes.

“This is an important step toward highly efficient and flexible hydrogen energy for a fossil-free energy system,” explains Professor Daniel Banuti, Director of the Institute of Thermal Energy Technology and Safety (ITES).

A key benefit of the design is that it does not require energy to compress air before combustion begins.

“A conventional gas turbine, such as those used in power plants or under aircraft wings, consumes about 50 percent of its power to compress air to the high pressure needed for efficient combustion — power that is then unavailable for electricity generation,” Banuti explains.

Detonation Waves Replace the Compressor

The new turbine is built around pressure-gain combustion. Conventional gas turbines use a mechanical compressor to raise air pressure, a process that can consume roughly half of the turbine’s power output.

The KIT system creates the required pressure inside the combustion chamber instead. Detonation waves form through a fluid mechanical instability involving wave and vortex patterns in the flowing gases. This allows the turbine to operate without a mechanical compressor.

Removing the compressor could reduce energy losses, lower the number of moving components, and improve overall efficiency.

Why Hydrogen Works So Well

The technology can operate with fuels other than hydrogen, but hydrogen is especially suitable because it reacts very quickly and can produce stable increases in pressure.

Researchers say the approach could eventually support turbines that are lighter, less expensive, and highly efficient. Potential applications include electricity generation and, over the longer term, aviation.

Generating Electricity Without Mechanical Compression

Connecting the combustion chamber to a turbine and converting its intense combustion into electricity created an additional engineering challenge. The rapid and powerful reactions inside the chamber make it difficult to transfer energy to the turbine in a stable way.

“This is extremely difficult because the very fast and intense combustion processes in the chamber make stable energy transfer to the turbine challenging. We are the first to successfully operate such a turbine and generate electricity in the process,” says Banuti.