Ten Years and More of ‘Biosciences’ in CORESTA - A Brief Historic Overview

In June 2001, the CORESTA² Board formally decided to broaden the scope of CORESTA by engaging in biosciences (other than tobacco agronomy and phytopathology), starting with in vitro toxicity testing and biomarkers of tobacco (smoke) exposure. Until then, work addressing biological aspects of smoking had only been done since 1996 by a special committee within CORESTA, reporting directly to the Scientific Commission, the Smoking Behaviour Committee. Membership of that committee was - similar to ACAC³ - by invitation only. The broadened scope consequently led to the re-shaping of the then Study Groups ‘Smoke’ and ‘Technology’ into ‘Smoke Science’ (SS) and ‘Product Technology’ (PT).

Subsequently, three Sub-Groups (SG) and Task Forces (TF) were set up, reflecting this change: i) SG Smoking Behaviour (name change of former Committee in 2001), ii) TF ‘Nicotine Intake’ (2001, later on named ‘Nicotine Uptake’, disbanded in 2009) and iii) TF ‘In vitro Toxicity Testing of Tobacco Smoke’ (2002). Finally, a new SG ‘Biomarkers’ was launched in 2009 with a wider scope than its predecessor TF ‘Nicotine Uptake’. The work of these groups has had and still has significant impact on the scientific work within CORESTA, leading to numerous presentations at CORESTA meetings and publications in peer-reviewed journals.

This paper provides a brief analysis of some 270 presentations and posters addressing tobacco smoke toxicity, human smoking behaviour or biomarkers, delivered at CORESTA Congresses and SSPT Joint Meetings between 1993 and 2011. More than 50% of these papers covered different aspects of toxicology, mainly in vitro toxicity testing methodologies, smoke exposure systems and other equipments. Other papers described the influence of cigarette design parameters on smoke toxicity. Approaches to human risk assessment were presented, including the search for suitable in vitro models of the major smoking related human diseases.

CORESTA began discussing smoking behaviour topics at their Vienna meeting in 1995 and received five respective presentations there; indeed, the issue has various aspects, from smoking topography and human smoke yield to smoke uptake, deposition and retention, and… Why do people smoke at all?

As early as 1996, a presentation was given on the determination of urinary mutagenicity in volunteers exposed to ETS (environmental tobacco smoke), apparently indicating a need for CORESTA to engage in this field and to face new challenges. Indeed, our knowledge of biomarkers and how to measure them has increased considerably over the years, and there is a clear trend towards using this knowledge for conducting clinical studies into the assessment of ‘modified risk tobacco products’.