Student Scholars & Faculty Mentors
Projects funded by our internal grants program. Search the table to find students or faculty mentors that share in your interests, and could help you achieve your goals in research, creative activity, or service.
Electronic Cigarette Fluid and Vascular Dysfunction
Name: Wood,
Advisor: Laura Weise Cross
Department: BIOL
Award: Student Research Grant
Abstract: Electronic cigarettes are becoming increasingly popular, but there is little known about their immediate and long-term effects on the vasculature. While some studies suggest critical effects on vascular endothelial cells (VECs), further investigation is needed to determine how vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are affected. Exposure to e-cigarette liquids has been shown to contribute to endothelial dysfunction, which may subsequently affect the phenotype of VSMCs. This project will assess whether VSMC migration and proliferation increase in response to e-cigarette liquid. It is hypothesized migration and proliferation will increase due to prior knowledge of cell functionality when cancers or other diseases are present. During our study, we plan to use pure nicotine as a positive control, while we compare and contrast the known effects on the vasculature of pure nicotine versus e-cigarettes that contain other non-nicotine additives.