Hydrogen tartrate salt of nicotine

The Ficoll-Paque premium was purchased from Haoyang (Tianjing, China), the human macrophage colony stimulation factor (M-CSF) was from PeproTech, Inc., and 22-[N-nitrobenz-2-oxa-1, 3-diazol-4-yl-amino]23, 24-bisnor-5-cholen-3-ol (NBD-cholesterol) was obtained from Molecular Probes (Eugene, OR). Antibodies against ABCA1, ABCG1, and GAPDH were from Novus Biologicals (ABCAM, Cambridge, MA). The human acute monocytic leukemia cell line THP-1 was obtained from the cell bank of the Basic Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (Peking, China). PMA, purified human HDL, and apoA-1 were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO). The fluorescence cholesterol was diluted in ethanol, and the final concentration of ethanol was 0.5%. Cigarette tar, a generous gift from the China National Tobacco Corporation, was dissolved in ethanol. Hydrogen tartrate salt of nicotine, which was also obtained from Sigma, was dissolved in normal saline (0.9% NaCl) to obtain the stock concentration, and the pH of the nicotine solution was adjusted to 7.4 by NaOH (1 M). Tricarbonyldichlororuthenium (II) dimmer (CORM-2)-released CO was used to mimic CO function (17 (link)). CORM-2, α- bungarotoxin, and TO901317 were purchased from Sigma.