University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: November 8, 2007

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

A top researcher on drug craving who joined the UB faculty this fall after 20 years at Purdue University and five years at the University of Utah will continue pursuing research on cigarette addiction funded by two federal grants totaling nearly $2.5 million.

Stephen Tiffany says a major impetus behind his grant-funded projects is the desire of national health organizations to counteract a perception that infrequent nicotine use protects against the most harmful effects of cigarettes.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

Stephen Tiffany, Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences, came to UB via the Empire Innovation Program, a SUNY-wide project designed to help attract top-tier research faculty to the state university system. Tiffany says a major force behind his current grant-funded projects is the desire of national health organizations to counteract a perception among low-level smokers that infrequent nicotine use protects against the most harmful effects of cigarettes.

"The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is increasingly interested in low-level smoking because it really presents a risk to folks in terms of cancers," says Tiffany, noting that nearly half of the smoking population is considered "low-level" smokers and traditionally ignored in studies on nicotine addiction. "Ultimately," he says, "I think the research will translate into public health messages about the risk of low-level smoking."

A major problem studying low-levels smokers—or people who smoke less than a pack a day—stems from the fact that researchers lack a reliable means to measure nicotine exposure in individuals whose cigarette use varies to a much greater extent than heavy, regular smokers, says Tiffany. In research funded by the NCI, he seeks to overcome this problem by analyzing hair samples from low-level smokers and matching nicotine found in the hair shaft with daily records of cigarette use. Collaborators on the project include two toxicologists from the University of Utah: Diana G. Wilkin, co-director of the university's Center for Human Toxicology, and Douglas E. Rollins, medical director of doping control during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Tiffany also serves as principle investigator on a project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse that focuses on moving psychological tests related to cigarette craving out of the lab and into the real world by using portable small-screen devices to measure the influence of "addiction cues"—an image of someone lighting a cigarette, for example—on volunteers' nicotine cravings over the course of a week. The project is in collaboration with researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Pittsburgh.

The recipient of bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology and a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Tiffany says his interest in researching addictions began with Tim Baker, a professor at Wisconsin for whom he served as a first-ever graduate assistant. Baker is now a nationally recognized expert on tobacco dependence.

"I hit the wave at a good time," Tiffany says, noting that over the past 20 years the role of craving in drug addiction has become a hot topic of research. "When I started there were relatively few studies on craving," he says. "Now, the number of studies is frankly overwhelming."

Although he speculates that the popularity of cocaine in the 1980s prompted a new wave of interest in drug addiction in the U.S., Tiffany says America experiences periodic "convulsions of concern" about drug use every 10 or 20 years. "Prior to [cocaine]," he says, "there were periods of time when people were intensely concerned about marijuana. There were periods when people were intensely concerned about heroin. Alcohol has perennially been a drug of major concern in this country—so much so that in the early part of the 20th century we had a constitutional amendment banning it."

Tiffany himself made an important contribution to the ongoing conversation about drugs in 1990 when he authored an influential paper challenging deep-seated notions about the connection between addiction and craving, including the idea that craving peaks right before a relapse. His work helped push research toward examining the role of situational cues in drug abuse, he says, explaining that experiments suggest circumstances or paraphernalia that remind addicts of past experiences using addictive substances seem to have a greater impact on relapses than previously thought. His subsequent reputation in the field has earned him an Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association in 1993, as well as consultant positions for such universities and corporations as UCLA, Indiana University, Pfizer, Merk and GlaxoSmithKline on projects related to alcohol, cocaine and methamphetamine addiction.

At UB, Tiffany is setting up a lab in which to perform psychological experiments related to smoking—installing adequate ventilation permitting subjects to light up indoors has slowed the project a bit—as well as seeking out interested graduate students and research volunteers. "I also have had a lot of undergraduates who work in the lab," he adds, noting that many of his undergraduate assistants at previous institutions have gone on to pursue advanced degrees in psychology.

As a psychologist whose interest in craving often verges into questions related to human biology and neurobiology, Tiffany says UB's strong emphasis on interdisciplinary research is one thing that attracted him to the university. Many universities say they have a commitment to breaking down boundaries between departments, but he says, UB's felt the most genuine.

"Increasingly," he says, "universities are talking this game, but talking is one thing and actually pulling it off is more difficult. I see a real commitment here at every level to this kind of research."

Although much of his life has been spent in the Midwest, Tiffany was born in Gowanda, and says returning to Western New York has been a pleasant experience because of the people, whose helpful attitudes are similar to his former state's famous "Hoosier hospitality." Tiffany resides in Williamsville with his wife, Maureen Lundergan, a nonpracticing ophthalmologist, and sons, Patrick Tiffany, a senior at Indiana University, and Patrick Lundergan, a freshman at the University of Utah.