In vitro toxicological characterization of perfluorinated carboxylic acids with different carbon chain lengths.

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Buhrke T, Kibellus A, Lampen A

In vitro toxicological characterization of perfluorinated carboxylic acids with different carbon chain lengths.

Toxicol Lett. 2013 Apr 12;218(2):97-104. doi: 10.1016/j.toxlet.2013.01.025. Epub 2013 Feb 4.

PubMed ID

23391484 [ View in PubMed

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Abstract

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is in use for the production of fluoropolymers (PFT). Due to its toxic properties it was proposed to replace the substance in its industrial applications by homologous compounds with shorter carbon chain length that were supposed to be less toxic compared to PFOA, however, the smaller PFOA homologs are poorly characterized so far. In this study we have conducted a comparative analysis of the toxicity of perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCA) with a carbon chain length ranging from four to twelve carbon atoms. By using the human hepatocarcinoma cell line HepG2 as an in vitro model for human hepatocytes we could show a positive correlation between the carbon chain length of the respective PFCA and its cytotoxicity. There was, however, no indication of an apoptotic mechanism for cytotoxicity. All PFCA under investigation were negative in two independent genotoxicity assays. As PFOA, being a well-known peroxisome proliferator, the other PFCA tested in this study were also shown to activate human peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARalpha) with PFOA having the highest potential of PPARalpha activation. Moreover, the compounds showed weak potential to activate PPARgamma and hardly activated PPARdelta. Taken together, the in vitro study revealed that PFCA with a shorter carbon chain length seem to be less toxic than PFOA.

DrugBank Data that Cites this Article

Drug Targets

Drug	Target	Kind	Organism	Pharmacological Action	Actions
Cardarine	Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta	Protein	Humans	Unknown	Agonist	Details