The National Institutes of Health's new Genes, Environment, and Health Initiative (GEI) has awarded the Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology (CEET) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine a grant of $2.3 million over the next four years to study biological indicators of exposure to cigarette smoke. The projects aims to identify a panel of lipid, DNA and protein biomarkers that indicate smoke exposure in smokers' blood, urine, and breath, and to correlated these to the incidence and genetic susceptibility to tobacco-related disease of the lung and cardiovascular system.

"This could be like measuring cholesterol for preventing heart disease," says principal investigator Ian Blair, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Pharmacology. "If, for example, a certain chemical change is seen in a smoker's DNA, it might inspire them to give up smoking. You could show them a biomarker panel and say, 'Here's your DNA on smoking and here's DNA without smoking.' This is my vision." Blair is also the Director of Penn's Center for Cancer Pharmacology.

Patient recruitment for this study is ongoing. See the Penn Medicine news release for more details.