Advances in Biological Chemistry, 2016, 6, 180-192 http://www.scirp.org/journal/abc ISSN Online: 2162-2191 ISSN Print: 2162-2183 DOI: 10.4236/abc.2016.66016 December 29, 2016 Biological Evaluation of New Schiff Bases: Synthesized from 4-Amino-3,5-dimethyl-1,2,4-triazole, Phenathroline and Bipyridine Dicarboxaldehydes Md. Shafiqul Islam 1 , Mohammad R. Karim 1* , William Boadi 1 , Seyi Falekun 1 , Aminul H. Mirza 2 1 Department of Chemistry, Tennessee State University, Nashville, TN, USA 2 Faculty of Science, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, Gadong, Brunei Abstract Four new Schiff bases with promising anticancer activity have been synthesized from 4-amino-3,5-dimethyl-1,2,4-triazole and di-pyridyl-aldehydes. Structures have been established by various spectroscopic methods. The compounds were tested in vitro to study their cytotoxicity and anti-oxidative activity in human lung carcinoma (A549), breast carcinoma (BT549), prostate adenocarcinoma (PC3) and mouse preadipocytes (3T3-L1) cells. Compound 1 was found to increase Glutathione (GSH) level slightly in all four cell lines. Compound 4 showed better selectivity and cytotoxicity against both BT549 and A549 cells compared to the anticancer drug tamoxifen. With the exception of compound 4 which reduced GSH levels in A549 and BT549, all other compounds maintained GSH levels in comparison to their respective controls. Keywords [2,2’-Bipyridine]-5,5’-dicarboxaldehyde, Schiff Bases, Anticancer, Glutathione, Anti-Bacterial 1. Introduction Cancer is the major cause of death in the present world. Approximately 14 million can- cer cases was diagnosed and 8.2 million people died because of cancer in 2012 [1] [2]. These numbers are more likely to increase over the following decades [1]. Accordingly, developing new anticancer drugs has become an urgent need. Currently a number of Schiff base and their metal complexes have been investigated as effective scavengers of How to cite this paper: Islam, Md.S., Ka- rim, M.R., Boadi, W., Falekun, S. and Mirza, A.H. (2016) Biological Evaluation of New Schiff Bases: Synthesized from 4-Amino-3,5- dimethyl-1,2,4-triazole, Phenathroline and Bipyridine Dicarboxaldehydes. Advances in Biological Chemistry, 6, 180-192. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/abc.2016.66016 Received: December 15, 2016 Accepted: December 26, 2016 Published: December 29, 2016 Copyright © 2016 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access