1. The mechanism of gastroprotective action of an antiulcer drug, sucralfate, was investigated. Studies in vivo were conducted with groups of rats with and without indomethacin pretreatment, and the animals received sucralfate followed by ethanol. In the in vitro system, gastric mucosa was cultured in the presence of sucralfate with and without indomethacin. 2. The in vivo experiments revealed that ethanol caused extensive gastric lesions which were significantly reduced following sucralfate pretreatment. Furthermore, sucralfate was also capable of preventing the detrimental effect of indomethacin on gastric mucus gel dimension and its mucin content. 3. The data with gastric mucosal culture showed that the sucralfate elicited increase in mucin was accompanied by the enhanced turnover of mucosal phosphoinositides. 4. Regardless of the inclusion of indomethacin, sucralfate evoked 23% reduction in phosphatidylinositol, 24% increase in inositol-1-phosphate and 3.4-fold increase in inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate, thus indicating the activation of phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C. 5. The results demonstrate that the gastric mucosal protective action of sucralfate is not mediated by endogenous prostaglandins, but appears to involve the metabolism of phosphoinositide-derived messenger molecules.