Health & Medicine Experimental Drug Turns Cancer’s Favorite Fuel — Sugar — Against It Researchers have developed a compound that delivers a one-two punch to cancer cells, exploiting their appetite for sugar while cutting off their backup fuel supply 4 minutes Microscope image of hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common form of cancer to arise in the liver. This is why many scientists have tried to develop drugs that block cancer cells’ metabolism by cutting off their sugar supply. By attacking both fuel sources at once, the experimental drug puts cancer cells under so much stress that many of them die. In lab experiments, the drug was effective against several types of human cancer cells, including melanoma, leukemia, breast cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer and neuroblastoma. In the mice with melanoma, most cancer cells died, while noncancerous cells were much less affected.