Phosphatidylcholine

Phosphatidylcholine

Phosphatidylcholines (PC) are a class of phospholipids that incorporate choline as a headgroup. They are a major component of biological membranes and can be easily obtained from a variety of readily available sources such as egg yolk or soy beans from which they are mechanically extracted or chemically extracted using hexane. They are also a member of the lecithin group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues. Purified Phosphatidylcholine is produced commercially by companies like Lipoid, VAV Life Sciences, Avanti Polar etc.

The name "lecithin" was originally defined from the Greek lekithos (λεκιθος, egg yolk) by Theodore Nicolas Gobley, a French chemist and pharmacist of the mid-19th century, who applied it to the egg yolk phosphatidylcholine that he identified in 1847 and finally completely described from a chemical structural point of view in 1874. Phosphatidylcholines are such a major component of lecithin that in some contexts the terms are sometimes used as synonyms. However, lecithin extract consists of a mixture of phosphatidylcholine and other compounds. It is also used along with sodium taurocholate for simulating fed- and fasted-state biorelevant media in dissolution studies of highly-lipophilic drugs.