lethality assay of radiopharmaceutical bis-thiosemicarbazones using brine shrimp (artemia salina) test

in the present study, aqueous solutions of some copper-complexing ligands were screened for their cytotoxicity using brine shrimp lethality test. among the ligands tested, diacetyl-bis(n4-methylthiosemicarbazones) (atsm) proved to be the most safe and non-toxic compound (2% lethality at 10 ppm), while pyruvaldehyde bis(n4-methyl)thiosemicarbazone (ptsm) was shown to possess low toxicity (7% lethality at 10 ppm) and glyoxal-bis-thiosemicarbazone (gts) proved to be a toxic compound even at 1 ppm (20% lethality). an interesting structure-toxicity relationship was observed for the ligands based on their water solubility leading to more toxicity which can be related to polysaccharide crustae of the shrimps. considering the 1-10 ppm to be the maximum possible concentration of the ligands in the final pharmaceutical samples, the safety of these ligands are atsm>ptsm>gts.