Ever heard of sweet revenge? Well, you might be against it, but your body is actually doing it. Yes, that’s right. There is a sweet twist in how your body is fighting off cancer. A new study by researchers at the Van Andel Institute found that glucose boosts cancer-fighting properties. The findings of the study are published in Cell Metabolism. Sweet twist
The new study found that glucose might be providing more than a sugar rush to cancer and infection-fighting T cells. The study uncovered that glucose, which is an essential cellular fuel that powers the immune cells, also aids in T cells’ internal communication and boosts their cancer-fighting properties. These findings may help to optimize T cells’ ability to combat cancer and other diseases.
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“Immune cells are highly influenced by their environment. We knew that T cells need access to glucose to function, but we didn’t know exactly why. It was previously thought that T cells mainly break down glucose for energy, but our new work shows that T cells use glucose as a building block for other molecules that are necessary to support T cells’ anti-cancer properties,” Joseph Longo, Ph.D., the study’s first author and a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Russell Jones, Ph.D, said in a statement. Building blocks for cancer defense
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The study found that T cells use a lot of glucose to make large molecules called the glycosphingolipids (GSLs). These are sugar-fat compounds that help them grow and produce proteins that T cells use to combat cancer.The GSLs help to form fat-rich structures on T cell surfaces known as lipid rafts. These rafts bring together cell signaling proteins that instruct the T cell to kill cancer cells. So when there is no GSLs, these signals become weaker, making T cells less effective at destroying tumors.
“Both T cells and cancer cells leverage different nutrients to support varying aspects of their function. The more we know about these different fuel sources, the better we can support T cells’ innate cancer-fighting abilities while also developing ways to possibly make cancer cells more vulnerable to immune attack,” Jones said.Glucose, which was only considered a basic energy source, is now a critical factor in how immune cells organize and communicate to carry out their cancer-killing mission, thanks to the new research.
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