Abstract
The development of biotechnological protocols based on cationic surfactants is a modern trend focusing on the fabrication of antimicrobial and bioimaging agents, supramolecular catalysts, stabilizers of nanoparticles, and especially drug and gene nanocarriers. The main emphasis given to the design of novel ecologically friendly and biocompatible cationic surfactants makes it possible to avoid the drawbacks of nanoformulations preventing their entry to clinical trials. To solve the problem of toxicity various ways are proposed, including the use of mixed composition with nontoxic nonionic surfactants and/or hydrotropic agents, design of amphiphilic compounds bearing natural or cleavable fragments. Essential advantages of cationic surfactants are the structural diversity of their head groups allowing of chemical modification and introduction of desirable moiety to answer the green chemistry criteria. The latter can be exemplified by the design of novel families of ecological friendly cleavable surfactants, with improved biodegradability, amphiphiles with natural fragments, and geminis with low aggregation threshold. Importantly, the development of amphiphilic nanocarriers for drug delivery allows understanding the correlation between the chemical structure of surfactants, their aggregation behavior, and their functional activity. This review focuses on several aspects related to the synthesis of innovative cationic surfactants and their broad biological applications including antimicrobial activity, solubilization of hydrophobic drugs, complexation with DNA, and catalytic effect toward important biochemical reaction.
Highlights
Cationic surfactants are amphiphilic compounds, which can dissociate in water with the formation of surface-active cations
In an effort to obtain quaternary ammonium compounds (QASs) that would be less toxic than existing cationic surfactants, novel quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) that contain a natural moiety have been synthetized by various research groups
The development of innovative functional nanocarriers based on cationic surfactants allows understanding the structure-activity correlation between chemical structure of the amphiphiles molecules and their aggregation behavior and functional activity
Summary
Cationic surfactants are amphiphilic compounds, which can dissociate in water with the formation of surface-active cations. Essential advantages of cationic surfactants are the diversity of their head groups allowing chemical modification and introduction of desirable moiety to answer the biotechnological criteria The latter can be exemplified by the design of novel families of ecological friendly cleavable surfactants [16], with improved biodegradability, amphiphiles with natural fragments [17], and geminis with low aggregation threshold, including those bearing hydroxyl-groups capable of hydrogen bonding [18], among others. The new class of biocompatible surfactants with polar head groups containing natural moiety such as sugar-, peptide-, and pyrimidine-bearing moieties are promising drug and gene carriers for intracellular delivery [40] They provide a widened spectrum of intermolecular interaction (hydrogen bonding, electrostatic, and van der Waals), stacking and complementary interactions upon self-assembly, and binding the drug, thereby combining high efficacy with lower toxicity [41,42]
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