New Schiff bases of 2-(quinolin-8-yloxy)acetohydrazide and their Cu(ii), and Zn(ii) metal complexes: their in vitro antimicrobial potentials and in silico physicochemical and pharmacokinetics properties

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to prepare Schiff base ligands containing quinoline moiety and using them for preparing Cu(ii) and Zn(ii) complexes. Four bidentate Schiff base ligands (SL1–SL4) with quinoline hydrazine scaffold and a series of mononuclear Cu(ii) and Zn(ii) complexes were successfully prepared and characterized. The in vitro antibacterial and antifungal potential experimentation revealed that the ligands exhibited moderate antibacterial activity against the Gram-positive bacterial types and were inactive against the Gram-negative bacteria and the fungus strains. The metal complexes showed some enhancement in the activity against the Gram-positive bacterial strains and were inactive against the Gram-negative bacteria and the fungus strains similar to the parent ligands. The complex [Cu(SL1)2] was the most toxic compound against both Gram-positive S. aureus and E. faecalis bacteria. The in silico physicochemical investigation revealed that the ligand SL4 showed highest in silico absorption (82.61%) and the two complexes [Cu(SL4)2] and [Zn(SL4)2] showed highest in silico absorption with 56.23% for both compounds. The in silico pharmacokinetics predictions showed that the ligands have high gastrointestinal (GI) absorption and the complexes showed low GI absorption. The ligands showed a good bioavailability score of 0.55 where the complexes showed moderate to poor bioavailability.

Keywords

• schiff bases
• quinoline hydrazine
• metal complexes
• antimicrobial
• in silico predictions