Hepatocellular Metabolic Abnormalities Induced by Long-Term Exposure to Novel Brominated Flame Retardant, Hexabromobenzene

Abstract

Novel brominated flame retardants (NBFRs) are widely used to avoid environmental accumulation concerns and because of the regulations imposed on classical BFRs. However, recent studies have not revealed the negative effects of NBFR accumulation and exposure on humans. We conducted a metabolomics study on hexabromobenzene (HBB), one of the NBFRs, to investigate its effect on hepatocytes. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry-based metabolite profiling was performed to observe metabolic perturbations by treating human livertissue-derived HepG2 cell lines with HBB for maximum 21 days. Metabolic pathway enrichment using 17 metabolite biomarkers determined via univariate and multivariate statistical analysis verified that long-term accumulation of HBB resulted in distinct diminution of eight amino acids and five other metabolites. Molecular docking of the biomarker-related enzymes revealed the potential molecular mechanism of hepatocellular response to HBB exposure, which disrupts the energy metabolism of hepatic cells. Collectively, this study may provide insights into the hidden toxicity of bioaccumulating HBB and unveil the risks associated with non-regulated NBFRs.

The Expectation and Reality of the HepG2 Core Metabolic Profile

“…Out of 56 articles, 4 had a direct link to raw data (from which one valuable dataset was kindly provided by the authors upon e-mail request [ 31 ], and three others deposited their data in a repository [ 27 , 46 , 68 ]). Twenty-three articles provided processed data in a reduced form (i.e., as complete lists of detected metabolites) [ 21 , 22 , 25 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 32 , 33 , 35 , 36 , 39 , 43 , 50 , 55 , 57 , 58 , 63 , 64 , 70 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 78 ]. The remaining 29 articles [ 23 , 24 , 37 , 38 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 44 , 45 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 56 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , …”