Recent Progress in Tailor-Tuned Metal–Amino Acid Frameworks: Broad Prospects in Pharmaceuticals

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are synthesized by integrating inorganic and organic components via reticular synthesis. By cautiously selecting the components of MOFs, one can produce crystals with exceptional porosity and remarkable thermal and chemical stability. To investigate the vast potential of MOFs in biological applications, their functionalization with nucleic acids, carbohydrates, lipids, and amino acids (including proteins and peptides) is particularly compelling. Metal-amino acid frameworks (MAFs), composed of amino acids or short peptides and metal ions, are intended to imitate natural biological processes and represent some of the most intriguing examples of precisely engineered networks due to their complex and unique topologies. This type of biofunctionalization can provide adjustable stability, enhanced biocompatibility, and bioactivity to the framework. MAFs serve as targeted medication carriers, stimuli-responsive biosensors in biomedical applications, asymmetric catalysts, biocatalysts in active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) synthesis, and biosensing, among other functions. Despite the challenges and little research surrounding MAF development, it possesses significant potential in the pharmaceutical sector. This review provides an overview of contemporary investigative strategies concerning metal-amino acid frameworks, focusing on their rational design, detailed structural feature analysis─including coordination geometries, cross-linking types, and network topologies─and prospective pharmaceutical applications. Additionally, the computationally and experimentally integrated models for assessing MAFs are examined along with the obstacles and difficulties encountered in the implementation of MAFs.