Lipoxamycin

Serine palmitoyltransferase

Lipoxamycin has antifungal activity against a panel of humanpathogenic fungi with better potency against some of the Candida species (MIC values, 0.25-16 µg/mL). Cryptococcus neoformans is the most sensitive organism, followed by various species of Candida . Other filamentous fungi are sensitive to the Lipoxamycin in disk diffusion assays.
Lipoxamycin has a long alkyl chain and an amino-containing polar head group. Lipoxamycin is on the same order of potency as the sphingofungins and also have potent activity against the mammalianenzyme.

Lipoxamycin is highly toxic in mice when applied subeutaneously or topically. Toxicity may be mechanism based, since studies with a Chinese hamster ovary cell mutant have shown that the serine palmitoyltransferase is an essential enzymein mammalian cells.