molecular aspect on the interaction of zinc-ofloxacin complex with deoxyribonucleic acid, proposed model for binding and cytotoxicity evaluation

recently, several studies have shown that the metal-fluoroquinolone complexes have more antibacterial and cytotoxic effects in comparison with free fluoroquinolones. these results may introduce new drugs for chemotherapy with fewer side effects. in this work a bidentated zinc (ii) complex with ofloxacin (ozc) was synthesized and cytotoxicity activities and dna binding of the resulted complex was studied. the in-vitro anti proliferative and cytotoxic effects of the free ofloxacin (ofl) and ozc against mcf-7, caco2 and sknmc cell lines were tested by using trypan blue and lactate dehyrogenase (ldh) assay methods. results revealed that the ozc exhibits better anti proliferative and cytotoxic activities as compared with the ofl. this may be due to the more interaction of ozc with dna. therefore, the interaction of ozc with dna was investigated by using voltammetry, uv-vis, fluorescence, ft-ir and circular dichroism spectroscopy methods, and the equilibrium binding constant (kb), binding site size, and thermodynamic parameters were measured. the results revealed that the ozc interacts with dna via two modes: electrostatic and outside hydrogen binding. the proposed dna binding modes may support the greater in-vitro cytotoxicity of ozc compared to ofl alone.