Schiff Bases: A Short Survey on a Promising Scaffold in Drug Discovery

Hugo Schiff (1834–1915) was born in the vibrant Jewish community in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. He was a prominent chemist a century ago, and he prepared a new class of organic compounds, which now have very wide applications, namely Schiff bases (SBs, imines or azomethines, Fig. (1), where R1 , R2 , R3 = alkyl and/or aryl) [1]. Since then, SBs have attracted the attention of inorganic, organic and medicinal chemists for a number of chemical and biological activities [2]. Their importance is underlined by a large number of scientific articles and reviews regarding these interesting compounds [3, 4]. However, there is still some confusion with nomenclature in this research area, specifically in the structure of SBs. Compounds bearing R3 as a substituted nitrogen atom are azo-SBs [5], but they are often named SBs [6, 7].