Cholesteryl ethers are nonhydrolyzable tracers of cholesteryl esters. We report here that the ethers are not legitimate tracers of esters in systems involving plasma cholesteryl ester transfer activity. On intravenous injection of doubly labeled high density lipoproteins into rabbits, cholesteryl ester tracer was more rapidly transferred to other lipoprotein fractions than was cholesteryl ether...

Cholesteryl esters are the major lipids that accumulate in arteries during atherogenesis. The mechanisms responsible for this lipid accretion have not been completely defined. Our previous experiments have shown that prostacyclin (PGI2) enhances cholesteryl ester catabolism by increasing cyclic AMP in cultured arterial smooth muscle cells. However, PGI2 is rapidly degraded under physiologic con...

Cholesteryl ester-laden macrophages are the hallmark of the fatty streaks that precede arteriosclerotic plaques in humans and experimental animals. This article studies several aspects of cytoplasmic cholesteryl ester metabolism in cultured human monocyte-derived macrophages. Adenosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (cAMP) consistently inhibited cholesteryl ester mobilization from cells that had be...

Prostacyclin (PGI2) has been reported to stimulate activities of acid cholesteryl ester hydrolase (ACEH; EC 3.1.1.13) and neutral cholesteryl ester hydrolase (NCEH; EC 3.1.1.13) in the smooth muscle cells leading to a decrease in intracellular cholesteryl ester. Recently, we have found that the half-life of PGI2 was prolonged through stabilization by HDL. HDL is known to have anti-atherogenic p...

The rate of secretion of apoB-100-containing lipoprotein particles by HepG2 cells is determined to an important extent by post-translational mechanisms, the mass of neutral lipids clearly playing a role in this process. Our previous data indicated that cholesteryl ester might influence the proportion of newly synthesized apoB-100 molecules that are incorporated into nascent lipoproteins rather ...

To date, several methods have been developed to determine the activity of plasma lipid transfer proteins. These methods have largely involved the addition of the transfer protein in question to labeled substrates, followed by prolonged incubation (4 to 18 hours) and subsequent evaluation of the radioactivity transferred to precipitated low-density lipoprotein (LDL). While adequate for determini...

Lipid transfer activities from human plasma have been characterized to determine whether triglyceride and cholesteryl ester transfer proteins are identical. After sequential purification by phenyl-Sepharose, CM-cellulose, chromatofocusing, and gel filtration, both triglyceride and cholesteryl ester transfer activities were purified approximately 15,000-fold compared to lipoprotein-deficient pla...

The hydrolysis of cholesteryl esters contained in plasma low density lipoprotein was reduced in cultured fibroblasts derived from a patient with cholesteryl ester storage disease, an inborn error of metabolism in which lysosomal acid lipase activity is deficient. While these mutant cells showed a normal ability to bind low density lipoprotein at its high affinity cell surface receptor site, to ...

Cholesterol exists within the hepatocyte as free cholesterol and cholesteryl ester. The proportion of intrahepatic cholesterol in the free or ester forms is governed in part by the rate of cholesteryl ester formation by acyl-coenzyme A:cholesterol acyltransferase (ACAT) and cholesteryl ester hydrolysis by neutral cholesterol ester (CE) hydrolase. In other cell types both ACAT and CE hydrolase a...

In addition to its ability to remove cholesterol from cells, HDL also delivers cholesterol to cells through a poorly defined process in which cholesteryl esters are selectively transferred from HDL particles into the cell without the uptake and degradation of the lipoprotein particle. The HDL-cholesteryl ester selective uptake pathway is known to occur in human, rabbit, and rodent hepatocytes w...