The established way to get the health benefits of coffee is the old-fashioned way: you drink it. You drink it, and then, scientifically speaking, almost all of your insides reap the benefits. But Texas A&M researchers have discovered another way coffee can facilitate you live forever: using caffeine as an on/off switch for gene-editing tools, which could facilitate treat cancer.
As reported ScienceDailyscientists at the A&M Center for Translational Cancer Research at the Institute of Biological Sciences and Technology sought to employ caffeine not for health purposes but as a factor that stimulates gene editing. Publishing their findings in a journal, they created “coffee bodies,” “specially designed nanobodies [that] reacts to caffeine.” These caffeine bodies are then combined with CRISPR, a gene editing tool, and transferred into cells.
Once inside the cells, researchers are able to employ caffeine to stimulate caffeine bodies, which act as a CRISPR switch “that then performs specific gene modifications in the cell.” The modifications will continue for as long as the caffeine passes through your system, usually several hours. And when the caffeine is gone, the modifications stop.
The researchers chose caffeine specifically because it is well-studied, is readily available and basic to employ, and has fewer side effects than currently available options.
To further refine the timing of the intervention, researchers found that they could employ the immunosuppressive and antiproliferative drug rapamycin to turn off CRISPR, rather than waiting for the switch to naturally subside.
“Rather than acting as therapies themselves, molecules like caffeine or rapamycin can serve as precise control signals for sophisticated cell and gene therapies,” says Yubin Zhao, Yubin Zhou, professor and director of the Center for Translational Cancer Research at the Institute of Biological Sciences and Technology and one of the study’s authors. “We hope that one day clinicians will be able to employ uncomplicated, known inputs to safely and reversibly tune effective therapies.”
Potential applications of caffebody-controlled CRISPR would include triggering CAR T cells. These are immune cells in the body that have been genetically modified to recognize and destroy cancer cells. For Green mindCAR T cells are always “on,” causing grave side effects, including an overactive immune response known as cytokine release syndrome. Using caffeine and rapamycin, doctors could essentially activate and deactivate CAR T cells as needed.
Caffebodies can also be used to induce insulin production in people with diabetes.
Caffebodies have not yet been tested in humans, so they are still a long way from being an approved and readily available drug. But the potential is invigorating. Soon, your morning coffee could also serve as a cure for cancer.
