Benjamin Toll, Ph.D.
Preventing cancer through the development of novel therapeutics for tobacco and nicotine use
Research Interest
As a Professor of Public Health Sciences and Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), Associate Director of Education and training for the Hollings Cancer Center (HCC), the Co-Director of Lung Cancer Screening Program at HCC, and the Director of the Tobacco Treatment Program at MUSC, I lead a treatment team focused on preventing cancer through provision of tobacco treatment for all HCC/MUSC patients who smoke. I have been conducting tobacco cessation research for over 20 years, having completed 5 large scale randomized smoking cessation clinical trials as PI and multiple pilot clinical trials. I also have 2 large clinical trials running presently. I have received continuous funding for over 15 years from both the National Cancer Institute (R01CA235697, R01CA207229, P50CA196530 [R01 equivalent], R01CA140256, R21CA181471, R21CA181569, R21CA127818) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (P50DA036151, K12DA000167) to conduct this research. I am currently the PI of 2 NCI funded R01 clinical trials, one comparing gain-framed messages and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to neutral messages and no medication for lung cancer screening patients and one comparing contingency management added to counseling and NRT to breath monitoring added to counseling and NRT for cancer surgery patients.