How GPT-5 helped immunologist Derya Unutmaz solve a 3-year-old mystery

Doctor and immunologist Derya Unutmaz has been interested in artificial intelligence for years. But his “aha” moment came in late 2025, when GPT‑5 Pro helped him and his lab revisit a three-year-old puzzle centered on a special type of immune cell that helps the human body fight cancer and other illnesses.

The mystery centered on a basic but consequential question in immunology: how does glucose affect the way T cells develop and specialize? T cells are immune cells that help the body fight viruses, kill cancerous cells, respond to some bacteria and parasites, and distinguish healthy cells from threats. As they develop, they take on different jobs, including roles that can shape cancer, autoimmune disease, and infection. Understanding what pushes T cells toward one specialization or another could help researchers better understand, and eventually, better treat those diseases.

Today, Unutmaz—a professor at The Jackson Laboratory and the University of Connecticut—says AI has become so central to his work that he can’t imagine doing science without it. “That would be like taking both of your hands away, or half of your brain away,” Unutmaz said.

The puzzle began in 2022, when Unutmaz performed an experiment trying to understand how a type of sugar called glucose affected the development of T cells. The cells use glucose as a fuel source, but also to build proteins and carry out other functions.

The results of Unutmaz’s experiment could have implications for ailments like cancer, autoimmune disease, and infections. But at the time, Unutmaz and his lab couldn’t make sense of what they were seeing.

Previous studies provided strong evidence that glucose metabolism influenced how T cells specialize. To better understand this relationship, Unutmaz and his team exposed T cells early in their development to either a low-glucose environment or to one containing a glucose-like molecule called deoxyglucose. Deoxyglucose interferes with a cell’s ability to use glucose, disrupting energy production and protein construction. Proteins matter because they coordinate activity within a cell and act as messengers that send and receive information outside the cell.