Endothelial Cell Cocaine Metabolite Exposure

When 80% confluent, primary human endothelial cells were treated with 0.01–100 μM norcocaine or benzoylecgonine (both from Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, NC) for 24 h, after which time they were used in all subsequent downstream assays. Ten μM was the primary concentration of each cocaine metabolite used throughout the study as the metabolites did not have an effect on PXR (Fig. 6F), which we determined occurred irrespective of concentration (data not shown). Further, 10 μM is consistent with the 9.2 ± 5.2 μM and 4.4 ± 4.4 μM range that occurs clinically [96 (link)]. Treatment with vehicle was used as a control.