Ricerc@Sapienza

The amphiphilic Zn-salophen complexes have lately been receiving attention due to their
aggregation behaviour, dependent upon some experimental parameters, such as concentration
and polarity of solvents. The possibility to control their aggregation morphologies, and their
well known capability to accept one axially coordinated donor species make them suitable
candidates for the development of new materials with applications in sensing. The search of
new amphiphilic derivatives of Zn-salophenes is thus an active research field. Our group have

Bile acids are a very important class of natural surfactants, showing
themselves and their derivatives as effective self-assembling materials. The morphology of bile acid derivative aggregates is strongly
dependant upon the substituents present both on the rigid steroid
backbone and on the side chain, making them suitable for applications in
nanochemistry, sensing and drug delivery.

In light of the biomedical interest for self-assembling amphiphiles bearing the tripeptide Arg-Gly-Gly (RGD), a cholic acid derivative was synthesized by introducing an aromatic moiety on the steroidal skeleton and the RGD sequence on the carboxylic function of its chain 17-24, thus forming a peptide amphiphile with the unconventional rigid amphiphilic structure of bile salts.