Assessment of AcuteIn VitroHuman Cellular Responses to Smoke Extracts from a Reduced Toxicant Prototype Cigarette

Abstract

Abstract Assessment of novel tobacco and nicotine products for their harm reduction potential compared with cigarettes is of significance for regulators and public health. The National Research Council's report, “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century,” outlines recent advances in molecular biology and the utility of human in vitro systems in toxicity testing. Such approaches could enable efficient, ethical, and economical risk assessment of chemicals and chemical mixtures. We investigated the potential of a simple in vitro lung model to discriminate between a commercially available cigarette (CC) and a reduced toxicant prototype (RTP) cigarette, which yielded significantly reduced toxicant emissions compared with the CC. The investigation compared cytotoxicity, oxidative stress-related and proinflammatory endpoints, associated with smoking-related disease development. Furthermore, we assessed the discriminatory potential of the model upon exposure to a selection of test matrices, which captured different f...