Interactions between single-chained ether phospholipids and sphingomyelin in mixed monolayers at the air/water interface—Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction and Brewster angle microscopy studies

Single-chained ether phospholipids comprise a class of both natural (PAF, lyso-PAF) and synthetic (edelfosine, ED) compounds possessing confirmed extensive biological activities. Among them ED is known to exhibit antineoplastic properties, while PAF and its lyso-precursor are lipids implicated e.g. in the functioning of organism immune system. In our study the interactions of ED, PAF and lyso-PAF with sphingomyelin (SM) being one of the main lipid found in a high concentration in membrane microdomains, like lipid rafts, were investigated in mixed monolayers at the air/water interface. The traditional Langmuir methodology was complemented with modern physicochemical techniques: Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction and Brewster angle microscopy. The investigated compounds, i.e.: platelet activating factor (PAF), (lyso-PAF) and edelfosine were selected because of their highly different physiological properties despite very similar chemical structure and evidenced membrane activity. The obtained results demonstrate that all the investigated three single-chained phospholipids cause strong modification of the model membrane properties in a concentration dependent manner. It has been proved that there are significant differences regarding the influence of the single-chained lipids on model SM membrane – in the region of low concentration, edelfosine was found to be the most effective among all the investigated compounds. The collected data shed new light onto the membrane behavior of the investigated herein biochemically active compounds, which can be of help in understanding their different biological activity and designing of new, more biocompatible drugs.