LAUSR

Abstract Many strategies have been used in treatment of cancer, but currently the chemotherapy is still the main force, unfortunately, general agents exhibit inevitable toxicity and inferior selectivity. Therefore, less toxic and high selectivity anticancer reagents have been extensively sought and developed. Here we report a series of Copper (II) complexes CuP1~CuP5 which have good biological activities. Due to the influence of the molecular size, CuP1 displayed the strongest bound with ct-DNA. All of the complexes show positive anticancer activities toward A549, H1975, HepG2 and T47D cancer cells. Additionally, flow cytometry experiments indicated that complexe CuP2 arrest cell cycles at S and G2 phase and mitochondrial membrane potential tests were also performed to explore the mechanism of action. Our findings disclosed that this type of complex represents a potent platform for development of metal anticancer drugs.