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A team of NYU dental researchers received a grant to determine whether cigarettes marketed as “reduced-risk” are actually any healthier.

The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the National Institute of Health, gave a research team at NYU’s College of Dentistry a two-year $320,000 grant, said Dr. Joseph Guttenplan, the team research leader and a professor of basic science and craniofacial biology.

The team will use the money to determine whether low-tar cigarettes are actually healthier or have a lower rate of oral cancer, Guttenplan said. He added that the researchers will test newer low-tar cigarettes such as those that are heated instead of burned.

Tobacco companies such as Philip Morris claim these cigarettes are less toxic, but admit that these claims are only based on machine tests that measure chemicals released into the air. The research team hopes to discover whether they are actually less dangerous.

Guttenplan said current research indicates that these cigarettes are in fact harming smokers.

“The evidence so far is that the low-tar cigarettes in the market today are not safer because people tend to smoke more of them,” he said. “They inhale deeper and longer.”

The National Institute of Health issues announcements to encourage research teams, like the one at NYU, to apply for grants that the institute deems important. The announcements also specify the questions it would like answered, such as whether a product causes an increased risk of cancer. The institute issued this particular announcement because it felt there was not enough scientific evidence to conclude anything about these new tobacco products.

Other research teams, such as those at the National Cancer Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American Cancer Society, have done extensive research to prove that low-tar cigarettes do not decrease one’s risk of developing lung cancer. NYU’s research team plans to test out the newer cigarettes, such as “ultra low-tar,” and see if they affect the risk of oral cancer.

The other members of the research team are Dr. Peter Sacks, a professor of basic science and craniofacial biology, and Dr. Fang-An Chen, adjunct professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery. In the two-part research process, Guttenplan and Sacks will develop cells that interact with the cigarette smoke and Chen will be in charge of evaluating any changes that occur.

Experiments will consist of a mixture of genetically-engineered rodent cells and human cells, Sacks said. The rodent cells will be used as “reporter genes” to illustrate changes the human cells would not be able to show.

The researchers will add tobacco smoke condensate, or liquefied tobacco smoke, from both regular cigarettes and the new low-tar cigarettes to separate solutions of the human-cell and reporter-gene mixture.

Sacks said the oral cells would react to the foreign material - the carcinogen in the tobacco smoke condensate - resulting in a metabolic process. This process sometimes creates a byproduct that can cause mutations in cells’ DNA that lead to oral cancer, Guttenplan said.

“Many of the components in tobacco that cause cancer have to be metabolized in the body in order to exert their carcinogenic effects,” he said.

The reporter genes are necessary because there is currently no way to detect genetic mutations in human oral cells or regular rodent cells, Guttenplan said. Reporter genes are genetically engineered so the researchers can observe the actual changes that occur in the DNA.

In the reporter genes, one can see if a mutation has occurred with any small piece of the DNA - but that isn’t possible to do with human DNA, Sacks said. Once the human oral cells react or metabolize into a new stage, they should move to the adjacent reporter genes and cause the same mutations.

In other words, the reporter gene senses how many mutations have occurred in the environment around it, such as in the oral cells, Sacks said. If the reporter genes develop mutations, it is likely the human cells will contain similar mutations.

Guttenplan said it is important for the research team to find out, through the use of the reporter gene, how human cells are affected - not just how they affect those of rodents.

“Who cares if rodents smoke and get cancer?” he said.

In the second stage of the research, Chen will examine certain characteristics of the genes simultaneously and determine whether the changed DNA will indicate oral cancer.

Chen’s work will evaluate differences between proteins in cells treated with the high-tar tobacco and low-risk tobacco products.