Glucose is the body’s main source of energy. What we consume is eventually broken down into glucose and is used to fuel us.

We usually think of the type of sugar as just fuel for our bodies, but a new study from Stanford University shows it does much more — especially when it comes to our skin.

A Stanford Medicine study published in Cell Stem Cell reports that glucose helps control how skin cells grow and mature. It does this by “switching on” a special protein called IRF6, which acts like a manager for turning on the right genes during skin development.

Instead of being burned for energy, glucose sticks to this protein and helps it do its job — leading to healthy, mature skin cells. When researchers blocked this sugar-protein connection, skin cells couldn’t develop properly in lab-grown skin models.

This finding changes how we see glucose. It’s not just fuel — it’s also a key messenger that tells certain cells how to grow. And this might not just be true for skin; scientists also believe glucose may play a similar role in how other types of tissues form.

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