BMC Pharmacology BioMed Central Research article Open Access Benfotiamine, a synthetic S-acyl thiamine derivative, has different mechanisms of action and a different pharmacological profile than lipid-soluble thiamine disulfide derivatives Marie-Laure Volvert1, Sandrine Seyen1, Marie Piette2, Brigitte Evrard2, Marjorie Gangolf1, Jean-Christophe Plumier1 and Lucien Bettendorff*1 Address: 1Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, University of Liège, Avenue de l'Hôpital, 1, 4000 Liège, Belgium and 2Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology, Department of Pharmacy, University of Liège, Avenue de l'Hôpital, 1, 4000 Liège, Belgium Email: Marie-Laure Volvert -
[email protected]; Sandrine Seyen -
[email protected]; Marie Piette -
[email protected]; Brigitte Evrard -
[email protected]; Marjorie Gangolf -
[email protected]; Jean- Christophe Plumier -
[email protected]; Lucien Bettendorff* -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 12 June 2008 Received: 19 December 2007 Accepted: 12 June 2008 BMC Pharmacology 2008, 8:10 doi:10.1186/1471-2210-8-10 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2210/8/10 © 2008 Volvert et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Lipid-soluble thiamine precursors have a much higher bioavailability than genuine thiamine and therefore are more suitable for therapeutic purposes. Benfotiamine (S-benzoylthiamine O- monophosphate), an amphiphilic S-acyl thiamine derivative, prevents the progression of diabetic complications, probably by increasing tissue levels of thiamine diphosphate and so enhancing transketolase activity.