Novel Copper Bearing Schiff Bases with Photodynamic Anti-Inflammatory and Anti-Microbial Activities Furkan Ayaz 1 & Ilyas Gonul 2 & Burcu Demirbag 1 & Kasim Ocakoglu 3 Received: 18 October 2019 /Accepted: 5 December 2019/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Schiff bases and their copper complexes have been previously studied for their anti- inflammatory, anti-tumor as well as anti-microbial activities. Schiff bases can be derivatized to gain photoluminiscence capacity. This property of the schiff bases enables the transfer of the electrons upon absorption of the light at a specific wavelength. In this study, we exploited this attribute of novel copper bearing schiff bases and tested their photodynamic biological activities. These compounds exerted photodynamic anti- inflammatory activities on the in vitro activated mammalian macrophages. Compared with salicylic acid control groups, these novel schiff bases had stronger activity which became more prominent with photo-induction. Moreover, they also had anti-microbial activity on gram negative bacteria E.coli and gram positive bacteria S.aureus.This anti- microbial activity was stronger than that of Neomycin on both bacterial strains. Our results suggest their potential use as anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial agents both in the dark as well as after photo-induction. Keywords Inflammation . Macrophage . Immunomodulation . Anti-inflammatory molecules . Anti-microbial activity Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-019-03223-7 Highlights • Schiff base derivatives had anti-inflammatory activity. • They decreased pro-inflammatory cytokine secretion by macrophages. • They lacked cytotoxicity or immunostimulant activity. • Addition of copper to the structure created a photo responsive anti-inflammatory agent • These compounds also had strong dark anti-microbial activities. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-019- 03223-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Furkan Ayaz furkanayaz@mersin.edu.tr * Ilyas Gonul ilyasgonul01@gmail.com Extended author information available on the last page of the article