Fighting Cancer by Targeting Its Sweet Tooth

Cancer cells are hungry for sugar - so hungry that they steal it from healthy cells in our body. Now, scientists have found a clever way to use this sugar-stealing habit against cancer itself.

Our body's natural defence system uses special cells called T cells to fight cancer. Think of T cells as your body's soldiers. But these soldiers need energy to fight, and that energy comes from sugar. The problem? Cancer cells hoard most of the available sugar, leaving these defender cells running on empty.

Professor Cyrille Cohen and his team at Bar-Ilan University came up with an innovative solution. They modified the defender T cells to become better at competing for sugar, essentially giving them an energy boost. How? By copying the same techniques cancer cells use to grab sugar for themselves.

The results were promising. In lab tests and in mice with human cancer cells, these "upgraded" T cells proved much better at fighting cancer than regular ones. They were stronger, more energetic, and better at targeting and attacking cancer cells.

This breakthrough could lead to better cancer treatments that work by strengthening our body's natural defences. The research team is now looking at whether this approach could work for different types of cancer.

This innovative research, supported by the Adelis Foundation and the Israel Science Foundation, represents a new chapter in cancer treatment - one that turns cancer's own survival strategy against it.