A preliminary cytotoxic study on the zinc complexes of flavonols

A series of newer flavonols and their zinc complexes were synthesized and characterized by infrared, proton nuclear magnetic resonance, and mass spectrometry. The lipophilicity for the test compounds was determined by carrying out partition coefficient using n-octanol-water system. Evaluation of the oxidation potential for the test compounds was performed by cyclic voltammetry. Further, all the test compounds were screened for their anticancer activity against Vero and MCF-7 cell lines using quercetin as standard. Compound F4, a 2-hydroxy-3-(4-methylsulphanyl-phenyl)-4H-naphthalen-1-one was synthesized by using 4-(methylthio) benzaldehyde, exhibited an oxidation potential at 0.641 V and 0.928 V, while its zinc complex, F4M1 showed an oxidation potential at 0.59 V and 0.96 V along with their log p values at 2.71 and 3.9, respectively. Amongst the ten compounds tested for their cytotoxicity on MCF-7 cell lines, compound F4 exhibited cytotoxicity at 31.43 µM as compared with that of the standard quercetin with its IC₅₀ at 26.5 µM. Thus, from our study it was found that, test compound F4 could become the promising anticancer molecule.