Patent 7723020 was granted and assigned to Schering on May, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The use of azetidinone compounds that are inhibitors of cholesterol absorption as tools for discovering and characterizing proteins involved in trafficking or absorption of cholesterol and/or cholesteryl esters in biological systems is presented. These compounds can serve as tools for competitive binding assays to discover and characterize other chemical agents useful as cholesterol absorption inhibitors. New compounds of the present invention are also highly efficacious inhibitors of cholesterol absorption.