Figure 5.

LXRα agonist inhibits foam cells formation in vitro. We used the macrophage cell line, RAW264.7, to confirm the role of LXRα in foam cells formation, we found that T0901317 promotes the expression of LXRα in cultured RAW264.7 cells (A). We use cholesteryl ester/cholesterol assay kit to confirm the foam cells formation, the data shows that T0901317 totally inhibited the foam cells formation (Cholesteryl Ester/Cholesterol < 50%) (B). Then, CCK8 assay was used to detect the cell viability treated with ox-LDL (model), in the presence of T0901317 and GSK2033, cells was treated with phosphate buffer as control group, the result shows that T0901317 partly rescued RAW264.7 cells viability which damaged by ox-LDL (C). We used oil red O staining to observe the morphology of foam cells and counted the number of foam cells, we found thatT0901317 significantly decreased the oil red O positive cells (D), this effect of T0901317 is achieved by promoting the expression of ABCA1 and ABCG1 (E). Transmission electron microscopy technology was used to confirm the number of the foam cells in cultured RAW264.7 cells treated with ox-LDL, data shows that fewer foam cells found in T0901317 treated mice than in other groups (F). *P < 0.05 vs. control, **P < 0.01 vs. control. #P < 0.05 vs. model, ##P < 0.01 vs. model. Scale bar, 50 μm or 2 μm.