Time course of NHBE cells exposed to whole cigarette smoke

Gene expression patterns were assessed in normal human bronchial epithelial (NHBE) cells exposed to cigarette smoke from a reference cigarette (2R4F, University of Kentucky) and a typical American brand of "light" cigarettes ("Lights") in order to develop a better understanding of the genomic impact of tobacco exposure, which can ultimately define biomarkers that discriminate tobacco-related effects and outcomes in a clinical setting. NHBE cells were treated with whole cigarette smoke for 15 minutes and alterations to the transcriptome assessed at 2, 4, 8 and 24 hours post-exposure using high-density oligonucleotide microarrays. Keywords: time course, cigarette smoke exposure 4 replicate Petri dishes of cells were exposed in a custom-built smoke exposure chamber. Cigarettes were smoked as per FTC protocols, and the smoke diluted such that the cells were at least 50% viable as compared to mock (air)-exposed controls after 24h. RNA from each replicate dish was analyzed using a separate array. Four replicates of an incubator (untreated with either smoke or air) are included also.