Versatile Benzophenone Derivatives: Broad Spectrum Antibiotics, Antioxidants, Anticancer Agents and Fe(III) Chemosensor

ABSTRACT Benzophenone is a versatile molecular scaffold that has been extensively explored in medicinal chemistry because of its propensity to exhibit a wide range of biological activities. This study represents a new azide ( 5 ) and triazole ( 6 ) compounds that were synthesized and well characterized by using FTIR, 1 H and 13 C NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. UV‐vis and fluorescence spectroscopic studies identified the sensitivity of compound 6 towards Fe(III) with no substantial interference from other metal ions. LOD values for recognition of Fe(III) were found to be 7.94 × 10 −5 and 3.67 × 10 −7 M, respectively. The biological studies of the compounds ( 5 and 6 ) depicted the antibacterial activity against Bacillus subtilis , Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa with the minimum inhibitory concentration range of antibiotics 0.12–6.2 mg/mL. Molecular docking experiments with various bacterial proteins demonstrated that compounds 5 and 6 possessed very low binding energies of −10.39 and −9.14 kcal mol −1 respectively. Both the compounds showed excellent cytotoxic activities against HeLa cells (cervical cell line). Further, the antioxidant quality of compound 6 has been analysed.