Anticancer activity studies of novel metal complexes of ligands derived from polycyclic aromatic compound via greener route

Methoxy and tert-butyl substituted carboxamide, carboxylic acid and hydrazone Schiff base groups have been assembled into our newly designed fluorenone based ligands and prepared coordination compounds of some first row transition metals and characterized thoroughly with spectroscopic (1H and 13C NMR, IR, GC–MS, UV–Vis), analytical, TGA and molar conductance measurements. The stoichiometry of all the metal complexes is found to be 1: 2 (M: L2) with the general formula, [M(L)2], where L is a singly deprotonated ligand and the geometry of all the metal complexes is found to be octahedral. Ligands and their metal complexes successfully cleaved the pBR322 plasmid DNA and in case of anticancer activity against MCF–7 (human breast adenocarcinoma) cell line, the synthesized compounds found to exhibit excellent activity with prominent apoptotic effect which is characterized by cell shrinkage, cell breakage and turgidity and results were compared with the standard drug cisplatin. Very significant anticancer activity was observed for compounds L1H, Cu(L1)2, Cu(L2)2, Ni(L1)2 and Ni(L2)2 with IC50 value of