Your morning coffee could one day help fight cancer

Science Daily · Feb 28, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Could something as common as coffee play a role in treating cancer? Scientists at the Texas A&M Health Institute of Biosciences and Technology believe it might. Their research combines caffeine with CRISPR, a powerful gene editing tool known as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, to explore new ways to treat chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes. The approach relies on a strategy called chemogenetics, which allows researchers to control cells using specific chemical signals. Yubin Zhou, professor and director of the Center for Translational Cancer Research at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology, focuses on studying disease at the cellular, genetic, and epigenetic levels. Over the course of more than 180 scientific publications, he has used advanced technologies including CRISPR and chemogenetic systems to better understand and potentially treat complex illnesses. Chemogenetics involves directing cell behavior with small external molecules, often medications or dietary compounds, that activate specially engineered switches inside targeted cells. Unlike conventional drugs that can affect many tissues throughout the body, this method is designed to work only in cells that have been programmed to respond. How Caffeine Activates Gene Editing Zhou's latest work builds on earlier discoveries about genetic switches inside cells. His team developed a new chemogenetic system that pairs CRISPR with caffeine to control when gene editing happens. The process starts by preparing cells in advance. Using established gene transfer techniques, researchers insert genes that produce three key components: a nanobody, its matching target protein, and the CRISPR machinery. Once inside the cell, these components are produced naturally. After this setup, the system can be controlled from the outside. When a person consumes about 20 mg of caffeine, such as from coffee, chocolate, or soda, it causes the nanobody and its partner protein to bind together. This interaction activates CRISPR, which then carries out specific gene modifications within the cell. This strategy also makes it possible to activate T cells in ways that other gene editing approaches cannot. T cells act as the immune system's memory, preserving instructions from past infections so the body can respond quickly in the future. Being able to switch these cells on intentionally could give scientists a new tool for directing immune responses against particular diseases. A Reversible On and Off Gene Switch The researchers also discovered that certain drugs can reverse the process. These drugs cause the paired proteins to separate, which halts additional gene editing. This added control is important for developing safe and adjustable chemogenetic therapies. In a medical setting, doctors could temporarily pause gene activity if a patient experiences stress or side effects from treatment, then restart it later when conditions improve. This makes it possible to fine tune gene control over time rather than leaving it continuously active. "You can also engineer these antibody-like molecules to work with rapamycin-inducible systems, so by adding a different drug like rapamycin, you can achieve the opposite effect," Zhou said. "For example, if at first proteins A and B are separate, adding caffeine brings them together; conversely, if proteins A and B start out together, adding a drug like rapamycin can cause them to dissociate." Rapamycin is a widely available immunosuppressant drug traditionally used as an anti-rejection regiment for organ transplant patients. It works by preventing white blood cells from attacking foreign material in the body. Because it is already affordable and commonly used, rapamycin is a strong candidate for applications in this new system. Caffebodies and Future Diabetes and Cancer Therapies When a specially engineered nanobody responds to caffeine, researchers refer to it as a "caffebody." Zhou believes these caffebodies could eventually help treat multiple diseases. In the long term, scientists may be able to design cells that allow people with diabetes to increase insulin production simply by drinking a cup of coffee. The platform is not limited to insulin. It can also be adapted to control other important molecules, including those that regulate T cells. In cancer treatment, for instance, caffebodies could be built into T cells so physicians can decide when, where, and how strongly the immune system attacks tumors. In laboratory animal studies, the team found that caffeine and its metabolites­ such as theobromine, which is abundantly available from chocolate or cocoa, can trigger this response and enable CRISPR based editing. According to Zhou, this approach is accessible, easier to manage, and may cause fewer side effects than some existing therapies. Precise Control for Gene and Cell Therapy Although scientists have previously explored ways to activate gene editing with small molecules, this system offers tighter control. After caffeine is introduced, researchers have a limited window of a few hours, or the metabolization time of caffeine, to guide gene editing or related physiological processes. Rapamycin can then be given as a stop signal, prompting the proteins to separate and ending the activity. Few current technologies provide this level of coordinated start and stop regulation, making the method especially promising for both research and therapeutic use. "It's quite modular," Zhou said. "You can integrate it into CRISPR and chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells, and also if you want to induce some therapeutic gene expression like insulin or other things, and this is fully tunable in a very precisely controlled manner." Zhou and his colleagues plan to continue preclinical testing and investigate additional medical uses for caffebodies and CRISPR. Their goal is to move closer to a future in which familiar compounds help guide advanced precision medicine. "What excites us is the idea of repurposing well-known drugs and even commonly found food ingredients like caffeine to do entirely new tricks," Zhou said. "Instead of acting as therapies themselves, molecules like caffeine or rapamycin can serve as precise control signals for sophisticated cell and gene therapies. Because these compounds are already well understood, this approach opens a practical path toward translation. Our hope is that one day, clinicians could use simple, familiar inputs to finely tune powerful therapies in a safe and reversible way."