UW Tobacco Center receives $8.5 million federal grant

The National Institutes of Health has announced that the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, a program of the Medical School, has been awarded a five-year grant for $8.5 million for research on tobacco dependence and its treatment. The research, to be conducted in Madison and Milwaukee, will study the long-term consequences of smoking.

The study will evaluate various smoking cessation treatments, both as part of a clinical trial in Madison and Milwaukee and as research conducted at primary care clinics in Milwaukee and other sites in eastern Wisconsin. At the conclusion of the studies, researchers hope to be able to individualize tobacco dependence treatments and improve quit rates among smokers. They also hope to better clarify the long-term health effects of smoking and quitting.

The research program is the product of an innovative public-private partnership. Added to the federal grant of $8.5 million is $3 million from the university, the Medical School, the Department of Medicine, the Comprehensive Cancer Center and GlaxoSmithKline, which has made an unrestricted educational grant of free quit-smoking medications. An additional $1.5 million in funding is needed to complete the research project.

The federal grant is the second Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) grant award to UW-CTRI. During the period of the first grant, 1999-2004, the center developed a new measurement for tobacco dependence, examined the effectiveness of combined treatments (bupropion and nicotine gum), determined the variability of nicotine withdrawal and created a computer program to help smokers quit.

“Our first TTURC grant showed us gaps in the research on the effectiveness of tobacco dependence treatments,” says Timothy Baker, director of research for the center and principal investigator for the new TTURC research. “It also paved the way for us to look at individualizing treatment, which we intend to do as part of this TTURC 2 research.”

The new award also will fund an analysis of health-care costs related to continuing to smoke and quitting — another gap in current information.

“The information obtained from this new research will be very practical,” says Michael Fiore, the center’s director and professor of medicine. “We will be looking at how smoking and quitting affects people’s mental and physical health, social relationships and lifestyle. And from this, we’ll be able to provide more specific treatment options for smokers who want to quit and their clinicians.”

The TTURC grants are funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

UW-CTRI has provided cessation and prevention services in Wisconsin since 1992 and is a nationally recognized research center.