William W. Ruch Distinguished Endowed Chair
Professor
Center for Metabolic and Liver Diseases
My fascination with sugars began early, sparked not by science but Oreos.
As a child, I couldn’t get enough. Later came chocolate, and with it a growing sense that sugars held more than just sweetness. They held mysteries. I never imagined that this childhood obsession would shape my scientific career, or that sugars — beyond glucose — could one day save lives.
In the mid-20th century, sugars were at the heart of biochemistry. But their complexity — challenging structures, arcane names and difficult technologies — led to their decline in favor of DNA, RNA and proteins, whose elegance and accessibility opened new frontiers in biology.
Still, glucose remained vital. It fuels our cells and became synonymous with metabolism. But what about the lesser-known sugars, the 5 to 10 percent that weren’t yet understood?
Then came a phone call, nearly 30 years ago:
“The boy is about to die. Can you help us save him?”
We did, by giving him not a common sugar, but mannose, a rare sugar that corrected a genetic defect. That child survived; so did others. Next came fucose, then galactose. Each sugar was used to treat different disorders. A child who couldn’t produce tears began doing so after drinking slushies infused with N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc). Ribose was tested for a form of muscular dystrophy—with promising results. GlcNAc is now being explored in clinical trials for multiple sclerosis.
Our lab now investigates how specific sugars can be life-saving therapies for rare genetic diseases, and potentially powerful adjuncts in common conditions like melanoma, triple negative breast cancer and colitis. We believe we are only scratching the surface.
We’re not just rediscovering sugars, we’re redefining them. What began with curiosity (fueled by Oreos) is now a mission to unlock the therapeutic power of these complex molecules and bring real, tangible hope to patients who once had none.