Synthesis, anticancer activity and molecular docking study of Schiff base complexes containing thiazole moiety

A Schiff base ligand 1 was prepared from condensation of salicyaldehyde with 2-amino-4-phenyl-5-methyl thiazole. The ligand forms complexes with CoII, NiII, CuII, and ZnII in good yield. The synthesized compounds were characterized by elemental analysis, magnetic susceptibility, molar conductance, infrared spectra, 1H and 13C NMR, mass, electronic absorption and ESR spectroscopy. The anticancer activity of the synthesized compounds was studied against different human tumor cell lines: breast cancer MCF-7, liver cancer HepG2, lung carcinoma A549 and colorectal cancer HCT116 in comparison with the activity of doxorubicin as a reference drug. The study showed that ZnII complex showed potent inhibition against human TRK in the four cell lines (HepG2, MCF7, A549, HCT116) by the ratio 80, 70, 61 and 64% respectively as compared to the inhibition in the untreated cells. Moreover, the molecular docking into TRK (PDB: 1t46) was done for the optimization of the aforementioned compounds as potential TRK inhibitors.