Anticancer activities of various new metal complexes prepared from a Schiff base on A549 cell line

[Display omitted] •Eight new metal complexes were synthesized and characterized.•All compounds (S3–S10) were screened against A549 cell line.•S3–S10 had cytotoxic effect on lung cancerous cells. In this study, a new compound namely 1-((2-hydroxynaphthalen-1-yl)methyleneamino)-5-(4-methybenzoyl)-4-p-tolylpyrimidin-2(1H)-one (S2) was synthesized as a Schiff base using 1-amino-5-(4-methylbenzoyl)-4-(4-methylphenyl)pyrimidin-2(1H)-one (S1) with 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde in 80% yield. Then, eight novel metal complexes (S3–S10) including Ni(II), Cu(II), Co(II), Ag(I), Pd(II), Pt(II), Cr(III), and Mn(II) metal ions were prepared from this new Schiff base (S2). The characterization of these complexes was done using 1H NMR, 13C NMR, LC-MS, IR, magnetic susceptibility and conductivity measurements. The anticancer activities of compounds (S3–S10) were tested against human epithelial lung carcinoma cell line (A549) for 72 h. All complexes demonstrated antiproliferative activity in A549 cell line and low half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values were calculated with GraphPad Prism program.