Biological evaluation of aromatic bis-sulfonamide Schiff bases as antioxidant, acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase inhibitors

Abstract

Aromatic/heterocyclic Schiff bases are one of the most investigated and studied scaffold for many pharmaceutical applications. For this reason, in the current work, a series of aromatic bis-sulfonamide Schiff bases (7-15) were re-synthesized by reacting aromatic bis-aldehydes and aromatic sulfonamides in ethanol and assayed for antioxidant properties by using different bioanalytical methods such as DPPH free radical scavenging assay, ABTS cation radical decolarization, cupric reducing antioxidant capacity (CUPRAC) and metal chelating methods. The acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) inhibition profiles were also assessed. In general, the synthesized compounds showed weak antioxidant activity against all tested methods, but two compounds (12 and 15) showed good CUPRAC activity at 10, 25 and 50 µM concentrations. The weak inhibition potency was obtained against AChE and moderate activity was observed against BChE enzymes at 200 µM.