Strip Certain Characters

Can anyone tell me how I can strip certain chahrcters from a string

I know I can use replace, but i don't think this is appropriate for what I want to do

For example I have the string

declare @text varchar (100)
select @text = 'word1, word2 & word3'

if i do a replace on the string like this
select @text = 'replace(@text, ',', '')
select @text = 'replace(@text, '&', '')

I end up with the string
select @text = 'word1 word2 word3'

i.e. 2 spaces between word2 and word3

What i want the string to look like is :
select @text = 'word1 word2 word3'

Is there a way i can check for more than one space + characters ( / , &) in one go

many thanks