Structure-activity relationship in PAF-acether. 3. Hydrophobic contribution to agonistic activity.

The synthesis of some selected PAF-acether homologues with an alkoxy-chain length from C1 to C20 in position 1 is described. All agonist activities are closely correlated among themselves and with the calculated fatty-chain hydrophobicity. After a discussion on recent published results and comparison with our data, we conclude that the ether oxide function is absolutely essential at the glycerol 1-position for potent agonist activity and that potency correlates well with hydrophobicity parameters. We indicate the importance of steric and configurational constraints.