MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Rajendram Rajnarayanan PhD Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Assistant Professor Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences University of Buffalo MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Human exposure to environmental chemicals i.e., insecticides and pesticides increases the risk of various diseases by directly interacting with proteins or signaling pathways in the endocrine or neuroendocrine system. In this study, our teamscience effort integrating big-data computation with receptor pharmacology, report for the first time that carbamate insecticides found in household and agricultural products interact with human melatonin receptors. At UB we have generated a database, we call it Chem2Risk, which contains about four million chemicals reported to have some level of toxicity. From those, after grouping the chemicals in clusters according to their similarity, we found several with potential to mimic melatonin. Wet-lab experiments confirmed that these chemicals indeed interact with melatonin receptors and have the potential to alter melatonin signaling. (more…)