Prue Talbot's Biography

Prue Talbot, Director, University Of California Riverside

My laboratory has studied the toxicological effects of tobacco products and tobacco-related disease for approximately 20 years. My laboratory has focused recently on new tobacco products including harm reduction cigarettes, Snus, dissolvables, and electronic cigarettes, and we are one of the few labs in the United States to have studied electronic cigarettes. Much of our work has been done on the effects of tobacco products on reproduction and development, with comparisons to adult lung cells. About 5 years ago, we began working with human embryonic stem cells (hESC) and have used them as a model to study the effects of tobacco products on human prenatal development. Pluripotent hESC enable us to evaluate chemical effects on cells equivalent to the epiblast stage of in vivo development. Differentiation of hESC enables us to study specific developmental processes during chemical exposure. These methods when combined provide very powerful tools to examine how environmental chemicals including those in tobacco products affect prenatal development, the most sensitive period in our life cycle. Our lab has developed methods for rapidly screening chemicals using small colonies of hESC in a reproducible quantitative manner. This method when combined with human adult cells enables reliable comparison of chemical toxicity in embryonic and differentiated adult cells. We are particularly interested in how new tobacco products effect embryos/fetuses and adults.

In addition, I have been involved in forming and administering new academic and research units on my campus. In 1999, I became the founding Director of the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology. In 2007, I founded the UCR Stem Cell Center, which in 2009, expanded to include a Stem Cell Core Facility that I currently direct.