From Monday 27th February to Thursday 2nd March, CoEHAR will host the kick-off meeting of the REPLICA 2.0 project. A team of international researchers from different countries will attend the event coordinated by CoEHAR to launch the new era of Replica.
Replica researchers aim was to fill the methodological gap in the field of the scientific research applied to tobacco harm reduction by independently reproducing some of the most relevant international studies in order to verify the robustness and replicability of the data.
To date, Replica 2.0 involves five laboratories around the World: Italy, Indonesia, Serbia, Morocco and USA. The researchers have re-tested industry data (cytotoxicity, mutagenicity, genotoxicity) to verify the harm reduction potential of combustion-free nicotine delivery technologies.
The main goals of the new era of Replica are:
- Establishing top quality THR laboratory capacity network (including LMIC)
- Replication of published work on combustion-free nicotine delivery technologies by tobacco industry (focus on findings of in vitro studies)
- Integrating innovative additional assays to increase robustness/reliability of existing results
- Publication of laboratory standards for cytoxicity, oxidative stress, inflammatory endpoints, mutagenesis and genotoxicity for tobacco/nicotine products
- Publications in high impact factor journal for scientific dissemination
At the kick-off meeting, which will be inaugurated on 27h February at the Biological Tower, will be present:
- Francesco Priolo, Rector of the University of Catania
- Lucia Zappalà, Rector’s delegate for Internationalization
- Salvo Baglio, Rector’s delegate for Research
- Riccardo Polosa, CoEHAR Founder
- Giovanni Li Volti, CoEHAR Director
- Lucia Frittitta, Director of Medclin Department, University of Catania
- Maria Angela Sortino, Director of Biometec Department, University of Catania
- Massimo Caruso, Co-Principal Investigator of Replica project
- Sonja Rust, Replica Project Manager
- Bouchra Ghazi, Mohammed VI University of Health Sciences, Marocco
- Ronny Lesmana, Universitas Padjajaran, Indonesia
- Vladislav Volarevic and Alexandar Arsenijevic, Faculty of Medical Sciences University of Kragujevac, Serbia
- Antonio Giordano and Ang Sun, Temple University-Sbarro Health Research Institute, USA
The program of the event
The Replica 2.0 network
