Funding has been awarded to a team at KREATiS led by Dr Paul Thomas to develop an in silico tool to predict endocrine disruption that occurs via the thyroid receptor and reduce the reliance on animals used for thyroid receptor endpoints in reproductive and developmental toxicity studies.
Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can affect the normal function of the endocrine system through interacting with receptors such as the thyroid hormone receptor. In vitro testing followed by extensive animal testing are required for the assessment of endocrine modalities and chemical safety regulations. For thyroid receptor-mediated endocrine disruption, in vitro thyroid receptor assays are limited or lack full validation and in vivo reproductive and developmental toxicology studies for thyroid receptor endpoints use large numbers of animals and are invasive, time-consuming and expensive.
The KREATiS team of expert modellers and toxicologists will develop user-friendly quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) and molecular docking tools to predict the interaction of chemicals with the human thyroid alpha and beta receptors.
