Studies have shown a negative association between cellular cholesterol efflux and coronary
artery disease (CAD). Standard protocol for quantitating cholesterol efflux involves labeling
cells with [3 H] cholesterol and measuring release of the labeled sterol. Using [3 H]
cholesterol is not ideal for the development of a high-throughput assay to screen large
numbers of serum as would be required in studying the link between efflux and CAD. We
compared efflux using a fluorescent sterol (boron dipyrromethene difluoride linked to sterol …