PERSISTENT POLLUTANTS
Federal agencies and courts had their say on the environmentally long-lived substances Two perfluorinated compounds—perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS)—were the focus of U.S. federal regulation and a handful of lawsuits in 2016. Though the major companies that make or use PFOA agreed in 2006 to phase out production, the chemicals persist in the environment because of the strength of their carbon-fluorine bonds. Once used in the manufacture of nonstick materials, such as 3M’s Scotchgard and DuPont’s Teflon, the perfluorinated substances have been linked to disease in humans. After more than a decade of study, the Environmental Protection Agency in May issued a lifetime health O advisory for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. According to the agency’s new CF3(CF2)6 C OH guidelines, utilities should notify consumers when the chemicals exceed 70 parts PFOA per trillion—individually or combined—in drinking water. O Environmental advocates, including environmental attorney Robert A. Bilott CF3(CF2)7 S OH questioned EPA’s delay in setting a chronic O exposure limit for drinking water. “That is something that could have been and PFOS should have been done 15 or 16 years ago,” Bilott says. In response to a 2014 petition by environmental and public health groups linking perfluorinated chemicals to cancer and birth defects, the Food & Drug Administration this year banned five perfluoroalkyl substances from use in U.S. food packaging. The environmental fallout over perfluorinated chemicals generated a variety of legal activities this year. In February, residents of Hoosick Falls, N.Y., sued Honeywell International and SaintGobain Performance Plastics for contaminating the village’s water supply. Both firms used PFOA to make stain-resistant fabrics. In July, a jury ordered DuPont and its spin-off Chemours to pay $5.6 million to a testicular cancer victim who traced his illness to Chemours’s Parkersburg, W.Va., fluorochemical plant. The suit is one of 3,500 pending in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, by plaintiffs who live near the Parkersburg plant. And in Alabama, one utility notified its customers that PFOA and PFOS levels exceeded guidelines for drinking water and then sued 3M and carpet makers in October for remediation costs. Years ago, the carpet makers used the perfluorinated substances in stain-resistant broadloom treatments.—JESSICA MORRISON &
MARC REISCH
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | DECEMBER 12/19, 2016
Guide RNA (green) directs the Cas9 enzyme (spacefilling structure) to a specific site in DNA (red) for editing. BIOTECHNOLOGY
The CRISPR craze continued CRISPR entered the patent court, stock market, and humans The buzz over CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology didn’t diminish in 2016. The year was chock-full of scientific advances and biotech investments, culminating in a U.S. patent court hearing that pitted pioneers in the field against one another to determine who holds the licensing rights to CRISPR. U.S. Patent & Trademark Office judges heard arguments earlier this month from attorneys representing the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University about why its patent— which specified the first use of CRISPR in eukaryotic cells such as human cells—should win the fight. The University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Vienna disagreed. Although their initial patent, filed but not approved before Broad’s, described using CRISPR in prokaryotes such as bacteria, their attorney argued the obvious next step was to translate the technology into eukaryotes. “There was no special sauce” in Broad’s eukaryote CRISPR patent, he stated. Timing for the final decision is unknown, but that isn’t stopping biotech firms from pushing ahead. Editas Medicine became the first CRISPR franchise to hit the stock market in February. Intellia Therapeutics followed, forming a partnership with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in April and going public in May. CRISPR Therapeutics went public in October. Meanwhile in the lab, multiple research groups reported different CRISPR strategies for potentially curing sickle cell disease in human cells and animals. Scientists at Harvard also created an improved CRISPR method to precisely modify single bases in DNA. CRISPR got into humans this year too. After receiving NIH approval, University of Pennsylvania researchers anticipated being the first to use CRISPR editing on immune cells that would be injected into cancer patients. But in October, Chinese researchers beat them to the punch, triggering a Penn scientist to say this could lead to “Sputnik 2.0.” Looking ahead to 2017, researchers hope to hear a decision on the CRISPR patent case. They are maybe a little less hopeful about Jennifer Lopez’s possible TV show, a thriller about CRISPR-based bioterrorism attacks.—RYAN CROSS
CREDIT: IAN SLAYMAKER & LAUREN SOLOMON/COURTESY OF BROAD INSTITUTE
Perfluorinated compounds got increased scrutiny
