Recently, several lipids were purified from natural sources and exhibited tyrosinase inhibitory activity.

A triacylglycerol, trilinolein, was isolated from sake lees, which are byproducts of sake production, and proved to be as potent as kojic acid for inhibition of diphenolase activity of mushroom tyrosinase.

Based on the findings, including inability of copper chelating, lack of free radical scavenging, and kinetically non-competitive inhibition of the inhibitor, the inhibitory mechanism was proposed by binding of the compound to some site of the tyrosinase, except the catalytic site.

In addition to long-chain lipids, some steroids were also determined to be tyrosinase inhibitors.