Not all sugars are bad for us. Too much of anything can be detrimental. Glucose is just food for cancer cells. They grow rapidly in the presence of high glucose. This is why someone with cancer should consider reducing or eliminating certain sugars from their diet.
I first tried using a common media for suspension cells but had a difficult time keeping the HL-60s alive after transfection which involves electroporation. Yes, you heard that right. I basically electrocute the cells to create pores so a plasmid can enter the cell membrane. The plasmid contains the code for the protein of interest along with the code for the fluorescent tag.
The cells are growing so much better in the high glucose media. I'm hoping this will help them survive the electroporation or other transfection methods and grow so that I can actually experiment with them.
In their defense, I think you'd have a hard time keeping me alive after electrocution, too, no matter how much ice cream you give me, so they sound like little troopers. No wonder they're so hard to cure.