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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Studying the effects of environmental chemicals in our bodies
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:02
	Publish Date:		2015-10-06 19:00:00
	Description:		At UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, researcher Amro Hamdoun is studying the effects of environmental chemicals like flame retardants and pesticides, and trying to figure out how they get into our bodies in the first place. To do this, they’re looking to the sea urchin to better understand the role of drug transporters, which are important determinants of drug absorption, excretion and how compounds enter target organs. "We’ve been looking at the biological properties of how these compounds interact with cells and how cells decide whether these are foreign compounds or not, and whether they can eliminate them." By understanding this process in sea urchins, researchers hope to extend this knowledge to humans and create a rule book of sorts. "Once you have that rule book you can then begin to design compounds around those rules. And you can even test existing compounds for their likelihood to interact with these drug transporters."
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