Norkio Sausman, a student in Bioengineering, received a MyBest Award to work in the lab during the summer. She worked with Sabrina Lin to develop a method for growing ovarian follicles in bioreactors. Noriko gave a poster presentation on her work at a symposium at the end of the summer.

Both Sabrina Lin and Prue Talbot participated in the hESC course at UCI during the fall of 2007.

Prue Talbot received a fellowship from the Academic Senate to help introduce human embryonic stem cell work into her lab this year. This support enabled the lab to set up and begin doing experiments with hESC.

Sabrina Lin and Prue Talbot shared an award in an image contest sponsored by California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). This image (below) of human embryonic stem cells appeared in a calendar published by CIRM this year. Prue then later also received an honorable mention for one of her images in a contest sponsored by the American Society for Cell Biology.

Vu Tran completed his Master’s degree in December of 2007 and successfully defended his work with mouse embryonic stem cells. Vu then immediately entered Ross Medical School in Dominica where he is currently completing his course work. He will be returning to the continental US later this year for further training.

Jessica Porter spent the summer and fall quarter of 2006 in France as a member of the Education Abroad Program. While there, she took courses in French and improved her French speaking skills. She graduated in 2006 then spent time abroad this past year and will be entering Ross Medical School this year.

Mariel Dimzon graduated in 2008 and entered Pharmacy School this year.

Prue Talbot continued as the Director of the UCR Stem Cell Center which has been active in stem cell research, education, and outreach. The Center is currently overseeing construction of a Stem Cell Core Facility which will open this year and will provide facilities and instrumentation for stem cell researchers in the Inland Empire. To learn more about the Stem Cell Center, please visit our webiste ( www.stemcells.ucr.edu )

PUBLICATIONS 2007 to 2008

Talbot, P. (2008) In vitro assessment of reproductive toxicity of tobacco smoke and its constituents. Birth Defects Research (Part C) 84: 61-72.

K. Riveles, V. Tran, Ryan Roza, Derek Kwan, P. Talbot. 2007. Smoke from Traditional Commercial, Harm Reduction, and Research Brand Cigarettes Impairs Oviductal Functioning in Hamsters (Merocricetus auratus) In Vitro. Human Reproduction 22:346-355 doi: 10.1093/humrep/del380

Baibakov, B, L. Gauthier, P. Talbot, Tracy Rankin, and J. Dean (2007) Sperm binding to the zona pellucida is not sufficient to induce acrosome exocytosis. Development 134: 933-943.

PAPERS PRESENTED AT MEETINGS (2007-2008)

Lin, S., V. Tran and P. Talbot (2008) Mainstream and sidestream cigarette smoke from traditional and harm reduction cigarettes negatively impair the attachment, survival and proliferation of mouse embryonic stem cells as well as the differentiation and formation of embryoid bodies. Presented at the First World Congress on Reproductive Biology, Hawaii.

Lin, S., V. Tran, and P. Talbot (2008) Use of embryonic stem cells as a novel model to compare toxicity of smoke from traditional and harm reduction cigarettes. Presented at the annual meetings of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, Philadelphia.

Lin, S., V. Tran, J. Tran, P. Talbot (2008) Embryonic stem cells as a model to study the effects of cigarette smoke on early embryo development. Presented at the 9th Annual Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology Annual Research Symposium, UCR.

Lin, S., V. Tran, and P. Talbot (2008) Use of embryonic stem cells as a novel model to compare toxicity of smoke from traditional and harm reduction cigarettes. Presented at the first annual meetings of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, San Francisco.

Tate, Erica, S. Lin, and P. Talbot (2008) Nicotine, pyrazine, and 2-ethyllpyridine, chemicals in cigarette smoke, affect attachment and proliferation of mouse embryonic stem cells. Presented at the Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research, Pomona.

Lin, S., .V. Tran, and Y, Wang (2007) Cigarette smoke negatively impacts survival and differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells. 8th Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology.

Lin, S., V. Tran, Y. Wang, and P. Talbot (2007) Cigarette smoke impacts survival and differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells. Presented at the 6th annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. Cairns, Australia

Talbot, P., Lin, S., Tran, V., Wang, Y., Kierstead, P., Lin L., and Cheung, C., (2007) Smoke from research and commercial cigarettes negatively impacts attachment, survival, and growth of embryonic stem cells and formation of embryoid bodies. Annual meetings of the TRDRP, Sacramento, CA.

Talbot, P. (2007) Identification of small organic molecules in cigarette smoke with high levels of biological activity. Presented at the WATCH Conference, New Delhi India, December 2007

GRADUATING STUDENTS 2008

Congratulations to the Mariel Dimzon, Vu Tran and Jennifer Tran who received their degrees in 2007- 2008!

PRESS RELEASES ON OUR WORK THIS YEAR:

Harm-reduction Cigarettes Are More Toxic Than Traditional Cigarettes, UCR Study Finds Toxicity adversely impacts reproduction and prenatal development (December 8, 2008)

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Typically, tobacco companies market harm-reduction cigarettes as being safer than traditional “full-flavored” brands, leading many smokers to conclude that the use of harm-reduction brands lowers their exposure to toxicants.

But a UC Riverside study now shows that smoke from these “light” or “low-yield” harm-reduction cigarettes retains toxicity and that this toxicity can affect prenatal development.

“Many chemicals found in harm-reduction cigarette smoke have not been tested, and some are listed by manufacturers as safe,” said Prue Talbot, a professor of cell biology who led the study. “But our tests on mice clearly show that these chemicals adversely affect reproduction and associated development processes. The effects are likely to be the same in humans, in which case pregnant women would be particularly vulnerable to the effect of smoke from these cigarettes.”

Talbot’s research team used mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) as a model for pre-implantation embryos—embryos that have not yet implanted in the wall of the uterus—and compared the toxicity on these cells of cigarette smoke emanating from traditional and harm-reduction brands.

Further, they studied the effects on the mESCs of two kinds of cigarette smoke: mainstream smoke, which is smoke actively inhaled by smokers; and sidestream smoke, which is smoke that burns off the end of a cigarette.

They found that both kinds of smoke from traditional and harm-reduction cigarettes are toxic to pre-implantation embryos and can retard growth or kill embryonic cells at this stage of development. Equally surprising to them was their discovery that mainstream smoke and sidestream smoke from harm-reduction cigarettes are more potent than the corresponding smoke from traditional brands of cigarettes.

“This result was unexpected since harm reduction brands purportedly have lower concentrations of toxicants,” Talbot said.

“Dr. Talbot’s work significantly enhances our understanding of the harmful effects of smoking on very early pregnancy,” said Olga Genbacev, a senior scientist in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at UC San Francisco, who was not involved in the research. “This study for the first time sends a clear message to nonsmoking women of reproductive age who are planning to become pregnant that they must avoid exposure to sidestream smoke.”

Study results appear in the journal Human Reproduction (published online, Nov. 29). The hardcopy version of the research paper is scheduled to appear in January 2009.

“Clearly, the tobacco companies have not eliminated all toxins from harm-reduction brands of cigarettes,” said Talbot, who also is the director of the UCR Stem Cell Center. “We found that both mainstream and sidestream smoke from traditional and harm-reduction cigarettes hindered the attachment of mESCs to extracellular materials. Such attachment is crucial to normal embryonic development. Moreover, cell survival and proliferation—also necessary for embryonic growth—were hindered as well.”

The researchers’ experiments on the mESCs showed, too, that on a per puff basis sidestream smoke was more potent than mainstream smoke in both traditional and harm-reduction brands of cigarettes.

“This may be because sidestream smoke is produced at a lower temperature and therefore contains higher concentrations of toxicants,” Talbot said.

When she and her colleagues performed the experiments directly on pre-implantation mouse embryos that had been cultured for one hour in mainstream or sidestream smoke solutions from a harm-reduction brand, they found that the effect of smoke on the embryos was similar to the effect it had on the mESCs.

“This strongly supports our use of embryonic stem cells as a valuable and effective model to study embryo toxicity during pre-implantation development,” said Sabrina Lin, a graduate student in the Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology Program working towards her doctoral degree, and the first author of the research paper. “This means we can use human embryonic stem cells to draw conclusions about the effect of cigarette smoke on pre-implantation human embryos.”

Next in their research, Talbot and Lin plan to conduct their experiments on human embryonic stem cells.

“To relate this research more strongly to humans, we have to use human embryonic stem cells,” Talbot said. “Sabrina has already started working on them, and her preliminary results are similar to those with mESC.”

Talbot and Lin were joined in the 18-month study by Vu Tran, who graduated from UCR in 2007 and is now at the Ross University School of Medicine, West Indies.

The Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of the University of California provided funding for the study.

The UCR Stem Cell Center, which oversees research, teaching, and outreach activities related to stem cells, will work with faculty in UCR’s School of Medicine, and broaden the university’s participation in translational applications of stem cell biology.

The UCR School of Medicine is projected to enroll its first incoming class of students in fall 2012.