In recent years, the number of people suffering from cancer and multidrug-resistant infections has sharply increased, leaving humanity without any choice but to search for new treatment options and strategies. Although cancer is considered the leading cause of death worldwide, it also paves the way many microbial infections and thus increases this burden manifold. Development of small molecules as anticancer and anti-microbial agents has great potential and a plethora of drugs are already available to combat these diseases. However, the wide occurrence of multidrug resistance in both cancer and microbial infections necessitates the development of new and potential molecules with desired properties that could circumvent the multidrug resistance problem. A successful strategy in anticancer chemotherapy has been the use of metallo-drugs and this strategy has the potential to be used for treating multidrug-resistant infections more efficiently. As a class of molecules, Schiff bases have been the topic of considerable interest, owing to their versatile metal chelating properties, inherent biological activities and flexibility to modify the structure to fine-tune it for a particular biological application. Schiff base-based metallo-drugs are being researched to develop new anticancer and anti-microbial chemotherapies and because both anticancer and anti-microbial targets are different, heterocyclic Schiff bases can be structurally modified to achieve the desired molecule, targeting a particular disease. In this review, we collect the most recent and relevant literature concerning the synthesis of heterocyclic Schiff base metal complexes as anticancer and anti-microbial agents and discuss the potential and future of this class of metallo-drugs as either anticancer or anti-microbial agents.

中文翻译：

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杂环席夫碱过渡金属配合物在抗菌和抗癌化疗中的应用

近年来，患有癌症和多重耐药感染的人数急剧增加，人类别无选择，只能寻找新的治疗方案和策略。尽管癌症被认为是全世界死亡的主要原因，但它也为许多微生物感染铺平了道路，从而多重地增加了这种负担。开发小分子作为抗癌和抗微生物剂具有巨大的潜力，并且已经有大量药物可用于对抗这些疾病。然而，癌症和微生物感染中广泛发生的多药耐药性需要开发具有所需特性的新的潜在分子，以规避多药耐药性问题。抗癌化疗的一个成功策略是使用金属药物，该策略有潜力用于更有效地治疗多重耐药感染。作为一类分子，席夫碱因其多功能的金属螯合特性、固有的生物活性以及修改结构以针对特定生物应用进行微调的灵活性而引起了人们极大的兴趣。人们正在研究基于席夫碱的金属药物，以开发新的抗癌和抗微生物化疗药物，并且由于抗癌和抗微生物靶标不同，因此可以对杂环席夫碱进行结构修饰以获得所需的分子，针对特定疾病。在这篇综述中，我们收集了有关合成杂环席夫碱金属配合物作为抗癌和抗微生物药物的最新相关文献，并讨论了此类金属药物作为抗癌或抗微生物药物的潜力和未来。