Abstract

Alkaloids are one of the main secondary metabolite of original plants and known for their beneficial health aspects. Chemically alkaloids are basic compounds and found in various parts of plants like fruits, flowers, seeds, stems, roots and leaves. Alkaloids also play an important role in the defense mechanism of plants against herbivorous animals and pathogens as they are bitter in test and also have toxicity in the animal and human being. Alkaloids have numerous medicinal, pharmacological, medical and veterinary importances. There are different types of alkaloid which is present in the nature and we can categorize into different classes on the basis of their chemical structure. Steroidal glycoalkaloids are N based compounds having C27 basic skeleton and mainly found in Solanaceae family. Potato, tomato and eggplant are some of the best examples of the steroidal glycoalkaloids and so far, more than 100 different types of glycoalkaloids have been isolated from Solanum species. Biologically glycoalkaloids have insecticidal, antimicrobial and fungicidal properties and are found to be active against various pests, insects and herbivores animals. Solanidine is a steroidal aglycon of potato glycoalkaloids having C27 H43 NO chemical structure. Glycoalkaloids are basically used as a precursor moiety for the synthesis of various pharmacologically active hormones and solanidine is one of the best examples of these chemical classes. Unlike many other steroids, solanidine has N containing heterocyclic unit and also has less toxicity than its glycosidal derivatives. Medicinally solanidine have antimicrobial, anticancer, anti-hyperlipidaemic, anti-inflammatory, anti-paracites and cardiac activities. In this review, we have discussed medicinal properties, important sources, pharmacological activities and analytical aspects of solanidine. From the above mentioned facts, we can conclude that solanidine have very bright future as it could be used as a leading precursor molecule for the synthesis of various steroidal drugs.

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