Chromatographic determination of total cholesterol in human lung healthy and cancer tissues of the same patient

Abstract

Cholesterol is an essential component of mammalian cells, but its role in cancer is unclear. We have determined the total cholesterol content in the healthy and the cancerous lung tissues of the same patient. Tissues of 13 patients (7 women and 6 men, different histological type, different stages of the disease) were obtained during surgical intervention. The samples (0.056–2.004 g) were hydrolyzed in alkaline medium, and the total cholesterol was extracted into n-hexane and simultaneously determined by thin-layer chromatography (TLC) on silica gel high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) plates and nonaqueous reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), which both proved to be suitable for the determination of cholesterol in lung tissues and gave comparable results. This is the first report about the comparison of the total cholesterol content in the healthy and the cancerous tissue of the same patient. The difference in the results for the total cholesterol from both types of ...