New Method Supercharges Immune Cells Against Tumors

Researchers develop a way to feed T cells a fuel source that tumors can't steal, improving their ability to survive and attack solid cancers.

Feb. 27, 2026 at 5:08am

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Researchers at UCLA have found a way to supercharge immune cells with a fuel source that tumors can't steal, dramatically improving their ability to survive and attack solid tumors in preclinical studies. The approach, published in the journal Cell, could help overcome a major barrier that has limited the effectiveness of CAR-T and other immunotherapies in solid tumors such as lung, breast and colorectal cancer, where immune cells are often "starved" of energy by aggressive cancer cells.

Why it matters

A major challenge with solid tumors is that the tumor cells deplete the key nutrient glucose from their environment, leaving the T cells that try to attack the tumor without enough glucose to effectively fight the cancer. This metabolic roadblock has limited the success of many immunotherapies in solid cancers. The new approach developed by the UCLA team aims to overcome this barrier by providing T cells with an alternative fuel source that tumors cannot access.

The details

The researchers developed a method to feed T cells glucose without offering the glucose to the tumor. They turned to cellobiose, a naturally occurring sugar found in plant fiber (cellulose) that is non-toxic and generally regarded as safe. Human cells and tumors cannot break down cellobiose, but some microbes and fungi can. By equipping T cells with two proteins derived from fungi, the researchers enabled the immune cells to import cellobiose and convert it into usable glucose inside the cell. In lab experiments and mouse models, these engineered T cells stayed alive, continued dividing, produced cancer-fighting cytokines, and effectively killed tumor cells, while unmodified T cells rapidly lost function.

  • The study was published in the journal Cell on February 27, 2026.

The players

Dr. Manish Butte

UCLA's E. Richard Stiehm Professor of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology and a member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Matthew Miller

A former doctoral student in Dr. Butte's lab and now a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute.

Timothy Thauland

A co-author on the study from UCLA.

Smriti Nagarajan

A co-author on the study from UCLA.

Wenqi Ellen Zuo

A co-author on the study from UCLA.

Miguel Moreno Lastre

A co-author on the study from UCLA.

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What they’re saying

“A problem with solid tumors is that the immune system tries to fight the cancer, but the tumor cells deplete the key nutrient glucose from their environment. This leaves the T cells that show up to attack with not enough glucose to make cytokines and kill. The balance between tumor cells eating the glucose and the T cells not having enough glucose is a key reason why tumors spread and elude immune attack.”

— Dr. Manish Butte, UCLA's E. Richard Stiehm Professor of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology and a member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (Mirage News)

“We demonstrate not only that glucose can be a limiting component of an effective anti-tumor response, but that we can design strategies to bypass the metabolic tug-of-war and deliver a high-value nutrient to T cells engineered with the proprietary metabolic processing system.”

— Dr. Matthew Miller, Former doctoral student in Dr. Butte's lab, now a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute (Mirage News)

“The survival of T cells in minimal levels of glucose was a huge hint that this was going to work. We saw that when glucose was scarce, the modified T cells used cellobiose to power all the same core energy pathways they normally use glucose for. Their metabolism looked healthy and normal, not starved. Overall, the results demonstrate that providing immune cells with an exclusive, tumor-resistant fuel source enhances their metabolic fitness and anti-tumor activity in solid tumors.”

— Dr. Manish Butte, UCLA's E. Richard Stiehm Professor of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology and a member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (Mirage News)

What’s next

The researchers believe adding the two genes that enable T cells to metabolize cellobiose, along with controlled delivery of cellobiose, could help many of the over 500 clinical trials worldwide testing CAR-T cells in solid tumors that are struggling with immune cell exhaustion and failure.

The takeaway

This new approach developed by the UCLA team has the potential to significantly improve the effectiveness of T cell-based immunotherapies for solid tumors by providing immune cells with an alternative fuel source that tumors cannot deprive them of. If successful in further studies, this could lead to major breakthroughs in the treatment of difficult-to-treat solid cancers.