A review on ‘sulfonamides’: their chemistry and pharmacological potentials for designing therapeutic drugs in medical science

Abstract

The discovery of new chemical entities having enhanced bioactivities and improved functionalities to overcome the prevailing antibiotic resistance and emerging diseases has evolved as the one of the most needed research areas in pharmaceutical field. Intensive research has been done on metal-based drugs and as a result, metal complexes of various Schiff bases are acknowledged as a potential area of research in bioinorganic chemistry on account of their promising applicable uses in several fields of science. Schiff base sulfonamides are versatile pharmacophores forming stable metal-based compounds by coordinating with metals of various oxidation states. As therapeutic candidates, they have been actively used in many applications including antifungal, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antitumor, antibacterial and many more. There has been a worldwide risk of drug resistance in the medical field as most of the pathogenic microbes are capable of deactivating drug substances. This review summarizes the research developments that have taken place from 2008 to 2022 on the pharmaceutical activities of Schiff base sulfonamides and their derived metal-based compounds.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Coordination chemistry
• biological properties
• metal-based compounds
• sulfonamide Schiff bases
• drug resistance

Acknowledgement

The authors are thankful to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan for providing financial support through the NRPU Project # 7800.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.