nj acts logoPlease read Dr. Aleksunes’ article in Environmental Science and Technology titled, “Revealing Adverse Outcome Pathways from Public High-Throughput Screening Data to Evaluate New Toxicants by a Knowledge-Based Deep Neural Network Approach.

Estrogen receptors (ERs) play critical roles in cell differentiation, fertility, and morphogenesis. ERs are present in many forms within cells, including estrogen-related receptors, membrane-bound G-protein coupled ERs, and nuclear ERs α and β. The interaction of estrogen with ERα and ERβ represents a classical ligand-dependent transcriptional regulation paradigm. ERs are more promiscuous than other steroid receptors due to their sizeable binding pockets. Therefore, environmental compounds (e.g., pesticides and plasticizers) can act as estrogen mimetics by binding to and activating ERs. Estrogen mimetics can act as endocrine disruptors, resulting in diverse adverse outcomes such as breast, vaginal, and uterine cancers and congenital anomalies. To read the full article.

Revealing Adverse Outcome Pathways from Public High-Throughput Screening Data to Evaluate New Toxicants by a Knowledge-Based Deep Neural Network Approach. Ciallella HL, Russo DP, Aleksunes LM, Grimm FA, Zhu H. Environ Sci Technol. 2021 Aug 3;55(15):10875-10887. PMID: 34304572 DOI: 1021/acs.est.1c02656 Epub 2021 Jul 25.