In cigarettes, tobacco combustion produces many different substances, some of which being toxic to the body, including tars, toxic gases such as carbon monoxide and heavy metals (cadmium, mercury, lead, …).
Tobacco industry is therefore focused on the search for alternatives to cigarettes. In the recent years, they have turned to electronic systems where proposed products are no longer burned, as with cigarettes, but heated to much lower temperatures. However, these new techniques, while generating lower concentrations of the most well-known cigarette toxins in inhaled smoke, seem to produce new molecules, generally not produced during combustion, or new chemical mixtures with unexpected toxicological properties, whose impact on cell metabolism must be estimated.
The challenge now is to find the best electronic process, as well as the best mixture that will generate the cocktail of inhaled molecules that will satisfy the consumer without harming him.
We can participate to this selection by suggesting to study smoke impact, on oxidative stress, anti-oxidant status, and consequently on OXPHOS, both on cell cultures or on animals, and even on voluntary consumers.