Biologically Active New N, N', N''-Tri-Substituted Ferrocenyl Phenylguanidines and their Characterization.

Background: Introducing new candidates for various biological targets is a prime characteristic of the present day medicinal research and development. Guanidines are the important bioactive compounds and are well recognized for their diverse biological activities, especially as anticancer, antimicrobial and antioxidant agents. Due to the favorable electronic properties of ferrocene like lipophilicity, redox activity, stability in solution state and its easy derivatization, have made ferrocenyl compounds very popular molecules for biological uses.

Preliminary investigation of anticancer activity by determining the DNA binding and antioxidant potency of new ferrocene incorporated N,N',N″-trisubstituted phenylguanidines.

Six new bioactive ferrocene based phenylguanidines were successively synthesized and characterized by means of various analytical techniques like elemental analysis, FT-IR, multinuclear ((1)H and (13)C) NMR, UV-Vis spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. The interaction of compounds with DNA was investigated by spectroscopic and cyclic voltammetric measurements. The interaction was found to be the electrostatic and the binding constants values were impressively larger.