“…Several factors can account for these results, which include the hydrophobic nature of the surfactants, micellar size and micellar shape [11,[24][25][26]44]. Bile salts are facial amphiphiles with weakly separated hydrophilic (carboxylate and hydroxyl groups) and hydrophobic (steroid backbone) moieties and the rigid steroid skeleton favours disk-like micelles [11,[44][45][46], where electrostatic interactions and surface charge density are reduced compared to spherical micelles. On the contrary, gemini surfactants with short alkyl side chains, including short-chain gemini surfactants derived from cysteine bearing a lipophilic disulfide bridge as spacer, such as (C 8 Cys) 2 , prefer to form spherical micelles [36,41].…”