A New Way to Diagnose Oral Cancer: A Lollipop! (Post #3)

Hi! Welcome back to the Spiramen Founder's Blog! Today, we will be discussing some exciting research related to oral cancer diagnosis. We will look at

what the suggested product is, how it works, its limitations, and its future.

In early 2024, a public research project was officially launched at the University of Birmingham (UK) to try and develop a smart-hydrogel lollipop for oral cancer diagnosis. This project was based on promising discoveries surrounding hydrogel technology.

Since many people might not know what the hydrogel is and how it works, here are a few basic facts to help you understand:

• hydrogel is a water-rich polymer network

• smart hydrogel can trap proteins because of certain chemical groups it has

• UV light can trigger the release of these proteins

• hydrogel can detect compounds that are usually too low to detect in standard tests

Now that we know the basics of smart-hydrogel, let's understand how the lollipop works.

The technology is based on the fact that oral cancer is related to elevated levels of a glycoprotein called "CD44". While CD44 is present in normal conditions, the release of CD44 is elevated in cancer. This same CD44 can be detected in the saliva! So, when patients suck on the lollipop, this CD44 is trapped in the hydrogel. When the lollipop is exposed to UV light, the proteins are released and can be detected.

This presents the possibility of easy oral cancer detection, without the need for invasive procedures like biopsies!

However, the lollipop is still a prototype and has not been approved for clinical use yet. For the general population, it is unclear whether it is sensitive enough to effectively replace biopsy. Additionally, it currently takes around 12 hours to capture proteins in testing, which makes it unrealistic for patient use.

Improving the capture time to around 10 minutes and ensuring that the lollipop's sensitivity matches that of a biopsy are crucial steps to making it clinically available.

With these improvements, this technology is extremely promising. It has the potential to replace invasive and expensive diagnostic procedures like biopsies. If it is developed to be low-cost, it can be supplied to high-risk populations and increase early diagnosis exponentially!

This technology is especially relevant to Spiramen's mission too. We currently aim to screen patients using general symptoms (like lesions) and toluidine blue solution. If we notice anything suspicious, we recommend that patients get further testing done. However, if the smart-hydrogel lollipop becomes clinically available at a low cost, we will be able to screen patients much more effectively! This lollipop prototype has enormous potential to support early oral cancer screening and we hope to see it come into clinical use soon.

Thanks for reading! We have another exciting post coming this Friday.

Image Citations:

University of Birmingham. Image of Smart Hydrogel Lollipop, www.birmingham.ac.uk/media-library/header-images/cancer-lollipop-image.x51b4b048.jpg?w=992&p=80&f=webp. Accessed 15 Dec. 2025.

Information Citations:

Birmingham, University of. “Birmingham Scientists Win Funding to Develop “Lollipops” for Mouth Cancer Diagnosis.” University of Birmingham, 22 Mar. 2024, www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2024/lollipops. Accessed 15 Dec. 2025.

Marshall, Nilima. “Scientists Developing “Flavored Lollipops” That Could Help Detect Mouth Cancer.” The Independent, 22 Mar. 2024, Scientists developing ‘flavoured lollipops’ that could help detect mouth cancer | The Independent. Accessed 15 Dec. 2025.

Wadhwa, S, and S Krishna. “A Sweet That Saves Lives.” BDJ, vol. 237, no. 3, 9 Aug. 2024, pp. 152–152, www.nature.com/articles/s41415-024-7729-5, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-024-7729-5.