Recent advances in steroid amino acid conjugates: Old scaffolds with new dimensions

Hybrid chemical compounds formed by conjugation of two or more bioactive molecules have shown wide variety of applications in biology, microelectronics as well as material sciences. In particular, the conjugates of steroid framework are known to have broad biological activity profile due to their ability to penetrate the biomembranes and bind to specific hormone receptors. Among the various conjugates of steroids, Steroid Amino Acid Conjugates (SAACs) are attractive because of the possibility of fine tuning of the amphiphilicity with position, orientation and nature of amino acids. The structural details, applications, mechanistic insights and their diverse pharmacological as well as other physicochemical properties of several SAACs are summarized in the present review. This review provides better insight for medicinal chemists to design and explore such novel conjugates which can be used as lead structures in the future drug discovery or as probes to understand the complex biological system.