Cytotoxicity investigation of free schiff base ligands toward human normal liver cell (WRL-68)

Schiff bases are compounds that produced from condensation of amine and carbonyl compounds such as aldehyde or ketone. Metal based Schiff bases have been widely used for industrial purposes and provide biological activities. Previous researches showed and proved that these metal complexes incorporating Schiff bases have antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antimalarial, antipyretic, antibacterial and anticancer properties. Cytotoxicity study is important for potential new substances and acts as an important element in drug discovery process. If a substance is found to have significant cytotoxic effect towards normal cell, the substance will be at disadvantage in developing into new drug as it may harm normal cell line and cause side effects on patients. This study was designed to investigate cytotoxicity activities of Schiff base ligands, OPI and CPI on human normal liver cell, WRL-68 by using MTT assay. The toxic effect, reported as ICso, yielded 373.81 µg/ml and 1003.96 µg/ml for OPI and CPI respectively. ICso for both samples showed that they did not exhibit significant cytotoxic effect towards WRL-68 cell line when compared with other drugs that have been proven to be cytotoxic towards the same cell line. The result indicates that both samples are safe to be developed into new drugs. However, despite the result, further researches still need to be done to assess the toxicity effect of these samples as well as the mechanism of inhibition.