Increased basolateral sorting of carcinoembryonic antigen in a polarized colon carcinoma cell line after cholesterol depletion-Implications for treatment of inflammatory bowel disease

Figure 1 Cholesterol can be depleted from Caco-2 cells by a combination of lovastatin and MβCD. Cells were grown for 1d in the presence of lovastatin/ mevalonate and then treated for 30-60 min with 10 mmol/L MβCD. A: Depending on the time of MβCD extraction, the total cellular cholesterol levels could be reduced by about 60%. Exposure for 30min with 10 mmol/L MβCD (2nd bar) was used for the following experiments. The cholesterol level was arbitrarily set to 100% in control cells. An asterisk indicates significant differences (56.3% ± 17.1% vs 100% and 46.3% ± 17.1% vs 100%, both ^aP < 0.05); B: [3H]-inulin permeability did not change after cholesterol depletion (P > 0.05).