Table 4.

Biomedical activity and application of sphingolipids

Subclass	Name	Activity	Medical application	Ref.
Ceramide	C6 ceramide	Increasing vincristine sensitivity via AMP activated protein kinase–p53 signaling	Colon cancer, pancreatic cancer	Chen et al., 2015
		Oxidized graphene nanoparticles as a delivery system for the pro-apoptotic C6 ceramide	Cervical cancer	Suhrland et al., 2019
		Graphene oxide nanoparticle delivery system enhance anti-cancer activity of C6 ceramide	Hepatocellular carcinoma	Wang et al., 2019
		Liposomal short-chain C6 ceramide induces potent anti-osteosarcoma activity	Osteosarcoma	Zhai et al., 2015
Sphingo-myelin	Sphingomyelin	Sphingomyelin-based nanosystems (SNs) for the anticancer miRNA therapeutics	Colon cancer	Nagachinta et al., 2020
		Site-activated drug releasing lipid-iron nanoparticle	Cancer	Medina et al., 2020
		Engineered liposomes sequester bacterial exotoxins and protect from invasive infections	Antibiotics	Henry et al., 2015
		Specific drug release lipid nanoparticles at infection sites	Antibiotics	Zhang et al., 2021
Glyco-sphingolipid	N-octanoyl-glucosylceramide	Improvement of doxorubicin delivery and efficacy in solid tumors	Squamous cell carcinoma, Melanoma	van Lummel et al., 2011
		Improvement of efficacy of liposomal doxorubicin	Lobular breast carcinoma	van Hell et al., 2013
		Formation of transient micro-channels within the cell membrane	Uterine sarcoma	Zalba et al., 2020
	α-Galactosyl-ceramide (α-GalCer)	Antigen-presenting cell immunotherapy by the activation of endogenous iNKT cells	Non-small cell lung cancer	Toyoda et al., 2020
		mRNA nanovaccine with α-GalCer induces antitumor immunity by NKT cells	Melanoma	Verbeke et al., 2019