Researchers identify how excess glucose helps cancer cells evade immune detection

Cancer cells have long exploited a molecular disguise — a dense sugar-derived coating called the glycocalyx — to evade the immune system's vigilance. Researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have now traced how high blood glucose, increasingly common in an era of metabolic disease, thickens this coating through a protein called HSF1, linking the modern epidemic of hyperglycemia to cancer's capacity for concealment. Published in August 2026, the findings suggest that targeting HSF1 could strip away the tumor's camouflage, returning cancer cells to the immune system's si