Preparation and Characterization of Novel Schiff Base Derived From 4-Nitro Benzaldehyde and Its Cytotoxic Activities

Normal drugs exhibit activities against both normal and cancer cells. furthermore, cancer cellsmay develop resistance to these drugs that alternative treatment must be explored. the mainobjective of this study was to examine the anticancer activity of schiff base against tonguesquamous cell carcinoma fibroblasts (tsccf) and normal human gingival fibroblasts (nhgf)and to propose its mechanism. a novel schiff base ligand was synthesized from the reaction of5-c-2-4-naba (5-chloro-2-((4-nitrobenzylidene) amino) benzoic acid). these schiff basespossessed azomethine group (-hc=n-) and aromatic group (ch) as analyzed by fouriertransforms infrared (ftir) spectroscopy and uv–vis spectra. the in vitro cytotoxicity screeningassay suggested promising activity against tsccf with ic50 of 446.68 μg/ml, but insignificantactivity against nhgf cells (ic50 of 977.24 μg/ml) after 72 h. the evidence of apoptoticinduction was supported by dapi staining of apoptotic nuclei with reduced cell numbers,suggesting that schiff base could induce apoptotic bodies in cancer cells being observed. basedon the schiff base structure, the anti-cancer mechanism may be attributed to the -hc=nazomethinegroup. for the first time, our findings highlighted the anticancer activities of the newschiff base against oral cancer cell lines.