A study on the chiral inversion of mandelic acid in humans.

Mandelic acid is a chiral metabolite of the industrial pollutant styrene and is used in chemical skin peels, as a urinary antiseptic and as a component of other medicines. In humans, S-mandelic acid undergoes rapid chiral inversion to R-mandelic acid by an undefined pathway but it has been proposed to proceed via the acyl-CoA esters, S- and R-2-hydroxy-2-phenylacetyl-CoA, in an analogous pathway to that for Ibuprofen. This study investigates chiral inversion of mandelic acid using purified human recombinant enzymes known to be involved in the Ibuprofen chiral inversion pathway.