Lysophospholipids: Synthesis and Biological Aspects

Lysophospholipids (LPLs) are secreted physiologically by various cell types. They exhibit a broad range of biological activities, playing highly important roles in the development, activation and regulation of the immune system and are also related to cancerous cells proliferation. Consequently LPLs or their receptors have become attractive targets for developing drugs specially in the treatment of cancers. Then the development of new synthetic methods for the preparation of LPLs is a challenging problem because the elucidation of the mechanistic details involved in the enzymological, cell-biological and membrane-biophysical roles of LPLs relies obviously on the availability of structurally diverse compounds. We will focus our attention on the chemical and enzymatic synthesis of LPLs and on the biological activity in particular of three LPLs, namely 2-lysophosphatidylcholine (2-LPC), lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) and sphingosine– 1–phosphate (S1P).