Academician Jiang Guibin’s group at SKLECE of RCEES has made important progress on the research of the estrogenic effects of a group of novel pollutants—polyfluorinated iodine alkanes (PFIs). This work was recently published in the journal of Environmental Health Perspectives（http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1103773）.

PFIs belong to a group of novel organofluorine pollutants but their potential toxicity is still unknown. The group studied the estrogenic effects of twelve PFIs using the E-screen and MVLN assays and the evaluation of estrogen-responsive genes in MCF-7 cells. It was revealed that PFIs promoted the proliferation of MCF-7 cells, induced luciferase activity in MVLN cells and up-regulated the expression of TFF1 and EGR3, thus exhibited estrogenic effects in these in vitro assays. The results of co-exposure of PFIs with 4OH-tamoxifen in MVLN cells proved that PFIs can activate the estrogen receptor. By comparing the estrogenic effects with other similar perfluorinated chemicals, it was found that the estrogenic effects of PFIs were dependent on their chain length, fluorine substitution and iodine substitution. The chemical structure of PFIs was very different from the traditional estrogenic chemicals which contain phenol ring structure. It was hypothesized that hydroxylated metabolites of PFIs are the responsible molecules for activating the estrogenic receptor. This study revealed the estrogenic effects of PFIs for the first time and could explain the structure-activity relationship, further helping us understanding the endocrine-disrupting effects of perfluorinated chemicals.

Environmental Health Perspectives is a journal established by the National Institute of Health (NIH), and it is ranked number one among journals within public health, occupation health and environmental health field in the world, and its impact factor is 6.09.