Ceramide Biosynthesis

Ceramide receives a lot of attention as a potential endogenous mediator of apoptosis in response to cytokines, antigens, anticancer drugs, or environmental stress inducers (10652518). These diverse stimuli can induce sphingomyelin hydrolysis accompanied by the accumulation of ceramide, which occurs before morphological changes. In addition, administration of exogenous ceramide analogs can mimic apoptotic cell death. These observations led to the proposal that ceramide has a key role in apoptosis signaling (12531549).