Synthesis and characterization of Fe+2, Cu+2 and Ni+2 complexes with thiosemicarbazide-di-meta-bromobenzylacetone and evaluation of their cytotoxicity against MDA-MB231 breast cancer cells

Abstract

This study is a part of a larger collection of studies evaluating the biological activity of various metal complexes formed of divalent transition metals and schiff bases, which are thiosemicarbazides with substituted Chalcone derivatives containing various groups on their two benzene rings. The diversity of the substituted active groups on the two benzene rings in the symmetric Chalcone has as its primary objective the control of the electronic density on the central ion in the metal complex and the investigation of the impact of the central atom's electronic density on the strength of the bond with the cancer cell. On this basis, a schiff base composed of meta-substituted bromine chalcone was prepared with thiosemic carbazide, and then divalent metal complexes such as nickel, copper and iron were prepared. Only the copper complex showed an average biological activity with an IC50 value equal to 40 μmol, while the rest of the complexes did not show activity at a concentration of 50 μmol. The results of this study showed that the effect of meta-substitution on the prepared complexes gave very little biological activity compared with the ortho- or para- substituted metal complexes in the case of bromine-group- substituted.