Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science

The Yale Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS 1.0) was formed at Yale in 2013 under a five-year federal grant to research the influence of flavors, including menthol, on tobacco addiction. The work at Yale and 13 other federally funded research centers has provided science-based knowledge to the U.S. FDA, which regulates tobacco.

In September of 2018, the National Institute of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration renewed a grant for the Yale Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS 2.0) to continue to investigate the influence of flavors and sweeteners, and other constituents, on the appeal and addictive potential of traditional tobacco products and newer products like e-cigarettes.

With the overarching goal of reducing appeal and addiction to tobacco products, the Yale TCORS 2.0 will conduct detailed evaluations of the influence of flavors and sweeteners on initiation, continued use and addiction and harm reduction from tobacco products. Cohesive and hypothesis driven, our research incorporates multiple methods and disciplines. The multidisciplinary team includes experts in sensory perception, tobacco addiction, adolescent tobacco use, menthol and irritant receptor biology, nicotinic receptor biology, dopaminergic signaling in brain reward pathways, human behavioral pharmacology, assay and clinical pharmacokinetics of drugs of abuse, analytical chemistry, health economics and decision-making science, and tobacco regulation.

In addition, the center trains scientists, and provides pilot funding to stimulate research related to tobacco regulatory science.