Among the various biological activities reported for saponins, those related with increase immune response and the destruction of the membrane of red blood cells deserve attention. In the development of vaccines, these properties exert antagonistic activities. However, the information about the structure-activity relationships is relatively scarce and sometimes contradictory. This paper aims to contribute to the establishment of structural relations involved with the hemolytic and adjuvant activities of triterpenic saponins by the analysis of the different groups linked to aglycone, with the use of multivariate statistical techniques. For this, we had twenty triterpenic saponins previously isolated from Aesculus hippocastanum, Dolichos lablab. and Glycine max species. Their adjuvant and hemolytic activities are available in the literature. These saponins were analyzed as groups linked to the triterpenic ring and biological activities resulting in an array of date that was submitted to cluster analysis and principal components analysis. The results confirm the importance of sugars in C-3 for hemolytic activity. However, the effect caused by the presence of a hydroxyl in C-16, CH2OH in C-17, acetyl in C-22 and acyl in C-21 on the hemolytic activity seems to be more important. On the other way, the presence of a hydroxyl in C-21, a methyl in C-17 and two sugars linked to aglycone seem determinant for adjuvant activity. Moreover, there is an inverse relationship between adjuvant and hemolytic activities in the set of saponins analyzed.
Saponins; structure-activity relationship; adjuvant activity; hemolytic activity; cluster analysis; principal components analysis
