Vapes and their Effects on Immune Cells in the Mouth

Katherine Christie ’27, Maya Tabakha

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Cuadra

What is the broader impact of your summer research? That is, why should the world care about your work?

The big why? What are potential affects of flavored e-cigs on immune cells? The word advertises vapes as a safe alternative to smoking. With the introduction of flavored vapes, they targeted young populations easily with over 5.6 million youths using them. The lack of transparency with vape advertising remains an issue.The goal of our lab is to start informing people of actual vaping affects. So they can know what they’re getting into. (Like the fact that they’re still getting nicotine even though its not a cigarette). The little why? How exactly does the e-liquid from vapes effect the morphology, gene expression (though that was more for sophie), and ability to phagocytose of THP-1 derived M1 macrophages. If vapes interfere with the macrophages abilities to do their job , then that opens a gate for potential bacteria and infections/diseases. 

What has summer research taught you about yourself and the field that you researched and/or studied?

This summer has taught me that exploration is good. Okay so maybe I should’ve taken more time off before jumping into a ‘9-5’ research program for 8 weeks. But hey! Now I know that! Its helped me realize that I have a lot of ideas, and maybe biology isn’t where I belong but I’ve been able to apply biological inquiry to other areas of potential research like psychology. You know, this summer taught me that research isn’t perfect. I’ve joked to my mother that this research experience was to either ‘steer me away from research or give me a tale of perseverance’. This is because of the multitude of problems we encounters: from the fridge breaking and all our cells dying, to having the wrong bacteria, to our incubator running out of CO2, to our anerobic incubator throwing a fit (and we needed to get new nitrogen) to our liquid nitrogen evaporating and killing everything in there. 
While these were setbacks, it taught me that science isn’t perfect. not everything goes as you expect. And thats okay, thats life. Whats important is finding a way to navigate through it or work around. Its definitely a tale of perseverance, 

What advice would you give to students considering a future research opportunity similar to the one you participated in?

Take time off the school year before jumping into research. Also, remember that science isn’t perfect, and that even if this experience isn’t for you, you can learn a lot of skills that can be applied elsewhere.