Thread by @yishan

I’m about to do the Lumina treatment, a cure for dental cavities developed by Lantern Bioworks.

I figured I’d do an unboxing and let you come with me on this journey. Here’s the box:

It’s a one-time at-home treatment, which replaces the bacteria in your mouth with a slightly different bacteria - one that doesn’t secrete the acid that attacks tooth enamel and causes cavities.

Ingredients:

Hmm, it’s half sugar. I guess that’s to give the bacteria something to snack on once it’s reconstituted?

PBS - what is that? Ah, it’s used to keep the bacteria from dying when they freeze dry it:

A subtle nod to the e/acc crowd:

Pretty simple instructions:

But first, what’s going on here exactly?

According to Lantern Bioworks (LB), we’re reconstituting a lyophilized (freeze-dried) dose of the bacteria with water, and then brushing it onto our teeth.

These bacteria differs from the bacteria in your mouth in a few ways:

1. It turns sugar into ethanol instead of lactic acid. Lactic acid is what causes cavities.
2. It produces a weak antibiotic (mutacin-1140), which kills competing oral bacteria
…

3. It’s immune to that antibiotic, so it doesn’t kill itself
4. It’s genetically stable, so it isn’t likely to mutate into anything else

The original researcher, Dr. Jeffrey Hillman, originally discovered this when he found the original strain with mutations #2 and #3 in one of his grad students’ teeth.

dental.ufl.edu/profile/hillma…

He quickly realized the potential of this, and spent the next decade adding mutations #1 and #4 and verifying the research.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3912416/

Then in 1996, he started a company called Oragenics to commercialize it and applied for FDA approval.

So why didn't we have a cure for cavities in the 90s?

The FDA required a study of 100 subjects, all of whom had to be “age 18-30, with removable dentures, living alone and far from school zones”.

This was impossible, and killed the project right there. Oragenics moved on other things.

Around that time, the scientists working on it applied the treatment to themselves. This is important later.

In 2023, the patent on the treatment held by Oragenics expired, and Lantern Bioworks bought the full recipe and existing samples, in return for 10% of any profits.

And, 20 years later, all the original volunteers have reported no cavities or ill effects since then.

(Obviously, there were also mouse trials, and they didn’t get any cavities either)

Some common questions before I get on with the unboxing...

Q: Is this safe?

A: Very likely. It hasn’t had any deleterious effects in mouse tests, on the volunteers over the last 20 years, or the in-the-know rich people who’ve had this treatment done recently in the last few months (I’m late to the party).

Moreover, the mechanisms involved are not very complex: the amount of ethanol involved is small and well-characterized, and the bacteria behaves in well-understood ways.

Q: Can you get drunk? Will this make me fail a breathalyzer test?

A: No. The amounts of ethanol involved are at least two orders of magnitude below the minimum amount of alcohol to cause impairment.

Q: Will this spread to other people I kiss?

A: Most likely not, but according to studies of couples who kiss constantly, it’s very slightly possible.

(By the way, those screenshots are from a comprehensive safety review document done by the company to try and map out all the possible risks or side effects. They seem very open to sharing it if you ask)

That said, babies are not born with oral bacteria, and it’s passed vertically from mother to child. So if you are a woman, you’ll likely pass it to your baby (as you do with your current oral biome).

I personally consider this a good thing, because it means that if we eliminate cavities THIS generation, it’s a one-time permanent upgrade for mankind.

It won’t be like vaccines, where if a future generation gets stupid and stops vaccinating, we get measles again.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that in general, the concentrations of this bacteria and the antibiotic it secretes are in far lower quantities than those used for medical treatment, or any type of intervention.

And, it was originally already found in the wild (a grad student’s mouth), so it’s not a wholly novel GM bacteria with utterly unknown dynamics.

The upside potential is: no cavities forever! Which by the way doesn’t mean you shouldn’t brush: gum disease and other elements of oral hygiene are not covered by this. It just prevents tooth decay from cavities, eliminating one potentially expensive and painful problem.

Q: Aren’t dentists are going to hate this?

A: In my informal anecdotal review so far, they don’t! Apparently dentists don’t make most of their money from fillings, but from orthodontia and other services.

It seems that most patients hate drilling, dentists don’t like doing things patients hate, so they don’t see themselves as being put out of business, but rather no longer having to do a part of their job that they dislike.

By the way, where’s that original researcher? Well, Dr. Hillman is retired, but he is an advisor to Lantern Bioworks, and additionally helped rope in one of the world experts on S.mutans (the bacteria in question) to also advise the company.

ohsu.edu/people/justin-…

So the scientists are on-board.

Q: But what about the FDA? Is this even legal?

A: Without FDA approval, you can’t make medical claims about a product. But if it’s at least harmless, you can sell it as a cosmetic, which is technically how the entire supplement industry works.

So Lantern Bioworks isn’t really claiming that this thing cures cavities, but they can sure make all the research available and let you decide for yourself:



It’s just a probiotic supplement!ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

If you’d like a more thorough review (from slightly earlier in LB’s history), Astral Codex Ten has a better FAQ:

astralcodexten.com/p/defying-cavi…

Q: Is this reversible?

A: Probably - it’s just bacteria, so if you take a course of antibiotics, it will likely wipe it out. If you want to restore it after a course of antibiotics, you may need another application of the treatment.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably convinced. So let’s proceed!

First, some warm distilled water - I’m going to heat it up beyond “warm” because it’s going to sit for a bit while I’m preparing everything else.

The direction says to fill the vial with warm water, but I’m not sure if I can pour it from a mug. Luckily, I have some eye droppers around.

I don’t have a prophy brush, so I’m going to replace the head on my Sonicare electric toothbrush with a new head - so as avoid any existing fluoride from prior brushing. This should be enough physical agitation to disrupt the existing biofilm.

Polishing my teeth

Filling the vial with the now-warm water…

Now I’ve tipped it into my mouth and I’m brushing for 3 minutes…

This is a lot of liquid in my mouth, so I’m struggling a bit. Also, you’re probably wondering what it tastes like…

(I used TWO toothbrushes for this: first the clean electric toothbrush to remove existing S.mutans biofilm from my teeth, and then a new regular toothbrush for the application)

It tastes like Cheerios, like if you ate your Cheerios with warm water instead of milk. It’s not bad, but it’s an uncomfortably large amount of liquid to hold in my mouth for 3 minutes while brushing at the same time.

It probably tastes like Cheerios because it was 49% sugar.

I finally finish, and spit it out. Now for the fun part!

Instead of candy, I’m going to have one of these handmade marshmallows. They’re delicious.

Okay, actually I had two. There ought to be plenty of sugar in there to help that bacteria grow.

One thing I was curious about was whether I’d perceive any immediate effect, e.g. if my mouth wouldn’t feel acidic after eating something sugary; it often does.

Here’s what I felt: maaaaybe? Those marshmallows are pretty sugary, and I usually feel “acid mouth” after that, and it seemed like it would milder.

Often after I eat something sweet, I do go rinse my mouth specifically so that I’m not tasting acid for like the next 15-30 minutes.

But my recollections of “how much acid taste” are pretty poor, so I can’t say for certain.

According to Lantern Bioworks, the colonization and turnover should take around 12-18 months. They offer swabs that you can do to send in which they PCR test to tell you how much of each bacteria you now have.

I would think that the perceptible difference would be that after a few months, you should no longer feel the acidic aftertaste that emerges after eating candy or other starchy things.

In any case, that was certainly a nice little adventure, and my teeth feel nice and clean since I brushed them TWICE. I’ll be having dinner soon, so my mouth bacteria (both the old and the new) will have plenty to snack on.

If you’re wondering how you can get your hands on this: Lantern has been providing these treatments at their clinic in Prospera, in Honduras.

It’s $20k a treatment, which I wasn’t quite willing to spring for (more the travel) but I also invested in them, so they were kind enough to send me a “free” treatment.

(Actually, I now see on their site that the price has come down to $5k)

They’re going to scale up and begin offering it as an at-home self-application treatment (as I just did) for $250/dose soon, which I think is a steal even if there’s only a 50% chance that it works.

I believe that this is one of those technologies that we need more entrepreneurs taking a chance on and helping to fund/invest.

While it isn’t the “recurring revenue” model that Big Pharma likes (a cure means you don’t come back), making it work, scaling it, bringing the price down, and then successfully getting it to every human who wants it would be a great upgrade of the entire human condition.

We owe it to ourselves to try.

If you want more information: luminaprobiotic.com

Just adding on another link here to an absolutely amazing comprehensive essay on the history of dental caries (cavities) leading up to the present day, including details on this particular innovation, written by @cremieuxrecueil:

cremieux.xyz/p/46ebd66b-8a6…