Lipases and their inhibitors in health and disease

• Lipids play diverse and important biological roles.
• Altering the levels of specific lipids exerts therapeutic benefit or causes disease.
• This review focuses on the roles of lipases and their inhibitors.

Lipids play diverse and important biological roles including maintaining cellular integrity, storing fat for energy, acting as signaling molecules, and forming microdomains to support membrane protein signaling. Altering the levels of specific lipid species through activating or inactivating their biosynthetic or degradative pathways has been shown to provide either therapeutic benefit or cause disease. This review focuses on the functional, therapeutic, and (patho)physiological roles of lipases within the serine hydrolase superfamily and their inhibitors, with particular emphasis on the pharmacological tools, drugs, and environmental chemicals that inhibit these lipases.