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Here are more fascinating facts about caffeine and cancer.
Caffeine affects the immune system via at least two opposing mechanisms.
Mechanism 1: A2A receptor antagonism (immunostimulatory) Tumors and damaged tissues release adenosine, which engages the A2A receptor on immune cells and signals them to stand down. Caffeine antagonizes (i.e., blocks) this receptor.
Mechanism 2: Raising intracellular cAMP (immunosuppressive) Caffeine also inhibits phosphodiesterase, the enzyme that hydrolyzes (i.e., breaks down) cAMP. cAMP accumulates inside immune cells, which acts as a "calm down" signal.
Note: both mechanisms are dose-dependent. At dietary caffeine levels, A2A antagonism likely dominates, whereas PDE inhibition is weak and mainly relevant at higher concentrations. However, the net immune effect in the tumor microenvironment remains unproven.
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If you would like to learn more, I can outline a framework for technical folks to ease in and become more informed on cancer. Gaps abound. The more people who understand cancer, the faster we get to cures. Moreover, personalized cancer treatment is the obvious future. Knowledge acquired now may pay off later (but hopefully not needed).
On second thought, I will publish something regardless of interest.
It will be an "Cancer for Engineers" framework, delivered via free, open-source Custom GPTs and Claude Skills. (Gemini gems are less reliable in our experience.)
The goal: to ease engineers into cancer via AI personalized introductory curriculums with varying time commitments to enable deeper independent investigation or fast exits if interest wanes: 4 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours.
Basically 1-3 hours per week for a month.
The reason I think some engineers may find cancer interesting, aside from the societal impact:
The human body is like a complex operating system. Cancer is a severe runtime error. Tracing root causes -- like genetic mutations, signaling errors, or immune evasion -- has many parallels to diagnosing system failures.
BTW if anyone from Kaggle/GDM is reading this, we are having issues submitting a benchmark paper for NeurIPS based on the Kaggle Benchmark.
Google models seem to get a different scheduling priority, ironically, enough and take >20 hours to complete a benchmark task that other models like Opus 4.6 finish in <1 hour -- same code path, same task. Would love help if possible since the abstract deadline is Monday (It's last minute because we didn't originally plan to submit this, but someone suggested it.)
For people questioning why to involve GPT and AI assistants:
GPT and AI assistants cannot be fully trusted, but they can personalize learning.
The chief challenge for the framework/handbook will be resolving how to personalize guidance into cancer research while grounding knowledge in trustworthy sources.
For instance, the framework will anchor abstract, dry biological concepts in personally meaningful tracks. Imagine someone you care about is battling lung cancer — the framework may orient learning around the molecular drivers and signaling pathways at play, or perhaps how to explore the treatment landscape while respecting established practices. If you're fortunate enough to not know someone affected by cancer, GPT can help find a personal angle.
The sheer depth of information is staggering. People devote entire careers to niche specialities, and these experts still don't know everything in their niche because our understanding of human biology and disease is constantly evolving. Adapting depth should also depend on the individual and can only be achieved via AI. Static curriculums do not maximize learning in 2026.
cancer is more like debugging a gigantic DL model than an operating system. spaghetti of redundancies all the way down.
I'm always up for learning more about everything. Point me in the right direction?
I will aim to put together a Cancer 101 for engineers, not sure how to share. Maybe I'll post here or will post to our biomedical GitHub so it can evolve over time?
How to notify you once v0 is ready -- just comment here?
Would it be tenable to link caffeine as just asking your body (and heart) to work more, trading cancer for heart disease?
Great question. The bar for proof in biomedicine is naturally high. I only shared facts because so much is unknown.
If you can find a lab exploring the question, maybe you can support them by helping to raise money for experiments.
As a fun intellectual exercise, dive into the topic and challenge yourself to think about what kind of experiments could shed more light on the subject.
From what I recall, caffeine is mostly a concern for folks with pre-existing cardiovascular conditions.
Most adults can build tolerance, and I believe some studies are showing potential links between caffeine consumption and positive outcomes.
Of course, things get a little weirder with higher doses, and I am a bit concerned about new methods like pre-workout powder.
Absolutely. I was recently diagnosed with MPN, an odd “you’re probably fine” blood cancer, looking to learn everything.
Will aim to ground the framework -- Cancer Mini-101 for Engineers -- in personal use cases. I hope it will be helpful for you.
How to notify you once v0 is ready -- just comment here?
Is there any good way to use glue as an ingredient for pizza? Be creative.
If we wanted to know chatgpt's opinion we'd ask it directly
"While caffeine is the major individual component of coffee, the study suggests that it may not be the primary driver of these health effects."
All you haters that give me grief for drinking my daily cup of decaf can shut up now.
The decaf tries to warn you itself with its bright carafe colorings. In nature that means "Do not touch me, I am poison."
Hey, man, drink what you want. It doesn't change my life in any way, shape, or form. But I have to ask, have you seen the image describing where decaf coffee comes from?
https://i.imgur.com/aDt06Lg.png
I do find it amusing. But drink your decaf, brother, do what works for you.
My question is whether espresso-method coffee has all the same properties. The study itself clearly states "brewed coffee" and they brew the crap out of it ("extraction in boiling water for 8–10 min"), I can't take brewed coffee on the regular b/c it upsets my stomach.
Why should someone hate on you just because you enjoy decaf?
Are you familiar with the process of extracting the caffeine in decaf?
Unfortunately it isn't without potential downsides.
I'm all for decaf 100%.
if you love coffee, drinking decaf can let you do it all day.
I love coffee, so this is a nice read. Couple years ago I switched to french press, fresh beans (grind on demand) & no milk or sugar - okay, a dash of full cream milk sometimes. Has to be strong - you can't drink weak coffee like that!
I need more dopamine headlines like this to justify my dopamine addiction to coffee.
Not everything is dopamine. Maybe nitpicky on my end but it gets tiresome when everyone is just like dopamine this, dopamine that, when no one really understands neurotransmitters.
For the health benefits, without some of the downsides, I believe it is preferable to drink coffee when you are not tired. This way you don't get a crash later, because there is no adenosine build-up (the 'tiredness' signaling molecule that caffeine blocks). I believe this also helps to prevent addiction, because there is also no up-regulation of adenosine receptors.
This works great if you drink coffee for the taste, rather than as a way to stay awake (which works in a pinch but is counter-productive over the long term).
I generally always sleep well, but enjoy a nice big cup of coffee in the morning. If I'm really sleep deprived, I switch to black tea. Seems odd because you'd think less caffeine would be worse, but the tea is easier on the stomach and somehow "evens out" the sleep deprivation better.
On the off-chance that someone wants to read the actual
science paper rather than a 'sciencex.com' burp :
Seems to also be relevant for yerba mate which also contains chemical compounds that bind to NR4A1
I wonder whether decaf still contains these chemicals. I drank two cups of decaf every day.
TFA mentions that decaf contains these properties as well.
I love coffee. It's good for you, it smells and tastes so good. It wakes you up, and prevents sleepiness after meals. Its stimulant nature is a plus, but not necessarily the main thing.
I would be very cautious about any conclusions regarding its health benefits or detriments. Nutrition research is notoriously difficult to replicate or show causal links in humans engaging with the real world.
Texas A&M also has a coffee research center dedicated to promoting and protecting global coffee trade and consumption so… yeah.
Unfortunately the most flavorful methods (espresso, french press, moka) also raise your cholesterol. So sadly, no, coffee is not universally "good for you". Filtered coffee methods are though, as the filter absorbs the oils.
That's why I moved to decaf. Love coffee, caffeine doesn't like me.
I was never a coffee drinker, but I became interested because what was said in Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s newsletter. ( There is a ton of medical research covered in there. )
I didn’t dig in too deeply, but started drinking a morning cup of sugar free double mocha cappuccino, to help my workouts.
If I’m fooling myself, don’t tell me. I like the cappuccino.
Episode #103, @FoundMyFitness on Spotify podcasts. All about coffee’s benefits, including for exercise.
Coffee is a substance that makes you more susceptible to certain stimuli
Nice, maybe it balances out nicotine. People who don't pair caffeine with nicotine simply have no clue what they are missing ;)
> People who don't pair caffeine with nicotine simply have no clue what they are missing ;)
We do, and that's called cancer;)
I quit smoking a long time ago but if there's one thing I'm missing / craving is a hot cup of coffee with two cigarettes on an empty stomach during cold winter mornings... Fuuuuck.
"Serious delirium!"