Definition and Introduction
Oxysterols are derived from cholesterol or related molecules and possess one or more additional oxygen-containing functional groups, which can exhibit potent biological activities. They tend to be more water-soluble than cholesterol by virtue of the additional polar functional groups which confer distinct physicochemical properties. Oxysterols are usually found at very low concentrations in biological samples (nM to μM), often at several orders of magnitude lower than cholesterol itself (Brown and Jessup 1999).
Initial interest in oxysterols stemmed from the idea that rather than cholesterol itself, some oxysterols control feedback regulation o…
Definition and Introduction
Oxysterols are derived from cholesterol or related molecules and possess one or more additional oxygen-containing functional groups, which can exhibit potent biological activities. They tend to be more water-soluble than cholesterol by virtue of the additional polar functional groups which confer distinct physicochemical properties. Oxysterols are usually found at very low concentrations in biological samples (nM to μM), often at several orders of magnitude lower than cholesterol itself (Brown and Jessup 1999).
Initial interest in oxysterols stemmed from the idea that rather than cholesterol itself, some oxysterols control feedback regulation of cholesterol synthesis. Subsequent work indicated that oxysterols are likely to play only an auxiliary role in cholesterol homeostasis (Gill et al. 2008). However, work in the past decade has revealed important new roles...
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Authors and Affiliations
School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Andrew J. Brown & Laura J. Sharpe
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- Andrew J. Brown
- Laura J. Sharpe
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Correspondence to Andrew J. Brown .
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Editors and Affiliations
Department of Pharmacology, Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, Bad Nauheim, Germany
Stefan Offermanns 1.
Medical Faculty, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
Stefan Offermanns 1.
Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany
Walter Rosenthal
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Brown, A.J., Sharpe, L.J. (2021). Oxysterols. In: Offermanns, S., Rosenthal, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Molecular Pharmacology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57401-7_10016
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57401-7_10016
Published: 07 January 2022
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-57400-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-57401-7
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