Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) presents one of the most aggressive and difficult to treat breast cancer subtypes as these cancer cells lack three receptors: estrogen, progesterone, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. The multiple coordination numbers in transition metal complexes have made such complexes with cobalt, copper, gold, ruthenium, rhodium metal centers, to name a few, quite popular for anti-cancer research in recent decades. Furthermore, the deleterious side effects of cisplatin as a cancer fighting agent have led us as scientists to synthesize complexes with other metal centers as alternatives to cisplatin for their use as chemotherapeutic drugs. Fortunately, copper, as a biologically essential metal, makes an attractive candidate for the synthesis of new complexes as chemotherapeutic drugs. Additionally, metal-based complexes that contain polypyridyl and thiosemicarbazones as ligands have been reported to possess a wide range of biological activities in in vitro studies. These ligands also have anti-cancer properties due to their ability to interfere with enzymes that catalyze DNA synthesis. Therefore, research involving polypyridyl and thiosemicarbazones ligands has become widespread due to their metal coordination capabilities.
Due to our efforts in anti-cancer research, we have synthesized, characterized, and utilized three new Cu(II) complexes with newly synthesized chromone-based thiosemicarbazone ligands for cytotoxicity studies. The respective ligands and complexes were characterized by elemental analysis, X-ray crystallography, high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), ¹H and ¹³C NMR, EPR, and UV-visible spectroscopies, where appropriate. Cytotoxic studies with each complex were carried out using CCK-8 assay on the human TNBC cell line, MDA-MB-231-VIM RFP. Additionally, the MCF-10A human breast epithelial tissue cell line and cisplatin were used as controls in order to determine the efficacy of the complexes via in vitro studies.

Ethan Schroeder

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