Recent methods for diversification of bile acids and related steroids towards supramolecular

Bile acids (BAs) are a class of steroidal surfactants that have been studied as building blocks for constructing useful chemical frameworks. These starting materials have rigid structures with defined hydrophobic and hydrophilic faces, which promotes self-assembly in well-defined chemical architectures. The BA scaffolds can undergo a variety of transformations to introduce a range functionalities with practical applications. These functionalized derivatives have seen application in pharmacology, supramolecular chemistry, and nanotechnology in roles such as surfactants, gelators, drug conjugates, or chemical detectors. This review seeks to highlight recent synthetic methods utilizing BAs to construct useful chemical structures and their application in supramolecular chemistry.