Abstract
The prevalence of “vaping” has recently seen significant increases in North America, especially in adolescents. However, the behavioral correlates of vaping are largely unexplored. The uptake of existing technologies meant for rodent vapor inhalation remains limited because of a lack of affordability and versatility (ability to be used with a variety of vaporizers). The OpenVape (OV) offers an open-source, low-cost solution that can be used in a variety of research contexts. Here, we present a specific use case, combining the OV apparatus with JUUL e-cigarettes. This apparatus consists of Arduino-operated vacuum pumps that deliver vapor directly from e-cigarettes to exposure chambers. The OV is easy to build and customize for any type of vaporizer (e.g., nicotine pod or tank; cannabis flower or concentrates). To test the OV, we performed biochemical verification and behavioral studies. The behavioral test (conditioned place preference, CPP) was conducted using adolescent and adult animals to assess developmental differences in the rewarding effects of nicotine vapor, as previously observed with injected nicotine. These findings demonstrate that even after brief exposures to nicotine vapor, pharmacologically relevant nicotine and cotinine levels could be detected in plasma, and significant CPP was observed, especially in adolescent rats which showed preference at shorter puff delivery durations (lower nicotine doses) compared with adults. Together, these findings suggest that OV provides an affordable, open-source option for preclinical behavioral research into the effects of vaping.
Footnotes
R.F.T. has consulted for Quinn Emanuel and Ethismos Research Inc on unrelated topics. All other authors declare no competing financial interests.
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant RGPIN-2019-05121 and Canadian Institutes of Health Research Catalyst Grant 442011 (to J.Y.K.). This work was also supported, in part, by funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program (R.F.T., CRC in Pharmacogenomics) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Foundation Grant FDN-154294.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
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