Fourteen academic centres are being set up in the first year of a partnership between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) to produce research to guide government tobacco regulators, the FDA said.
As much as USD 53 million (EUR 39 million) will be awarded to the initial 14 Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS) in fiscal 2013, a sum that could exceed USD 273 million over the next five years, the FDA said.
“The TCORS program is the centerpiece of the FDA/NIH collaboration to foster research relevant to tobacco regulatory science,” FDA said. TCORS research will be used to assess the impact of past, current and future tobacco regulation, the agency said.
Research areas include the diversity of tobacco products, reducing addiction, toxicity and carcinogenicity, tobacco product marketing and economics.