Currently, there is increasing evidence linking diabetes mellitus (especially type 2 diabetes mellitus) with carcinogenesis through various biological processes, such as fat-induced chronic inflammation, hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, and angiogenesis. Chemotherapeutic agents are used in the treatment of cancer, but in most cases, patients develop resistance. Phenformin, an oral biguanide drug used to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus, was removed from the market due to a high risk of fatal lactic acidosis. However, it has been shown that phenformin is, with other biguanides, an authentic tumor disruptor, not only by the production of hypoglycemia due to caloric restriction through AMP-activated protein kinase with energy detection (AMPK) but also as a blocker of the mTOR regulatory complex. Moreover, the addition of phenformin eliminates resistance to antiangiogenic tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI), which prevent the uncontrolled metabolism of glucose in tumor cells. In this review, we evidence the great potential of phenformin as an anticancer agent. We thoroughly review its mechanism of action and clinical trial assays, specially focusing on current challenges and future perspectives of this promising drug.

Proceeding from a ligand constituted by two units of kojic acid linked by a methylene group, which proved a very promising chelator for excess iron(III) and aluminium(III) pathologies, two new ligands have been designed and synthesized: one by adding a vanillin molecule in the linker and the second by adding an o-vanillin molecule. Both these ligands, on the basis of complex formation studies presented here, show significant potential as therapeutic agents for iron and aluminium overload. Protonation constants of the pure ligands have been determined by potentiometry, and standard reaction heats by calorimetry. Hydrogen bonding plays an important role in the protonation reactions. The crystal structures of both ligands have furthermore been resolved. Complex formation equilibria for the iron complexes have been studied by combined potentiometry–spectrophotometry and those of aluminium by potentiometry alone. All complexes were found to contain two metal ions. NMR diffusion measurements hardly applied to complex formation equilibria and the results of density functional theory (DFT) calculations were powerful tools in confirming the proposed reaction model and in evaluating the relative stabilities of the products. Further support was given by NMR chemical shift measurements and electrospray mass spectrometry.