New research from North Carolina State University sheds light on the ways in which environmental chemicals can affect vitamin D receptors (VDR). The work shows that compounds identified as possible VDR disruptors in the Tox21 database interact with VDR in vitro and supports the efficacy of high throughput screening programs to identify compounds of interest.
“Most people think of vitamin D as only a vitamin, but in the body vitamin D is converted to a hormone, so VDR is part of the endocrine system which regulates hormonal function,” says Seth Kullman, professor of biological sciences at NC State. “If something – an endocrine disrupting chemical, for example – interferes with the hormone’s function at different times of development or aging, it could drastically alter physiology of a number of important systems.”