Cancer is considered one of the most lethal diseases in the world, with a prevalence of 439.2 cases and 163.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, in the period from 2011 to 2015; this disease has a greater impact in underdeveloped countries. For the treatment of this disease, a combination of chemotherapy with surgery or radiation is generally used, however, it is not exempt from adverse effects or resistance of the tumor to this type of treatment, for this reason the search for new treatments is constant. The plants are a possible source to achieve this; Lamiaceae is a family of plants widely distributed on the planet and has been used traditionally for the treatment of different diseases, and various essential oils with the potential for cancer treatment have been isolated from this species. The scope of this review is to present 46 essential oils isolated from different species of Lamiaceae which have been tested against different cancer cell lines.

Currently, there are approximately 250 antibiotics registered for use in human and veterinary medicine worldwide, which, as a result of inadequate management and poor disposal of waste, among other bad practices in their management, are more common in wastewater; this situation has begun to attract more attention and be an interesting topic for the proposal of solutions. In the search for options to solve this problem, structured materials are being actively studied; one material that has received significant attention is the metal organic framework (MOF) type. The use of MOFs with various topologies and characteristics are demonstrating great effectiveness in the elimination of different types of contaminants from water, such as medications, such as anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, explosives, and heavy metals. Different antibiotics are used as models in these studies, from which it follows that the nature of the drugs that can be eliminated from effluents is very varied, which allows us to see that it can be an interesting option. Another objective pursued by these studies is to seek to establish the number of cycles in which these materials can be used to carry out the capture of drugs, as well as the type of kinetics that follow the adsorption of these materials in the MOFs.

Nanomedicine plays an important role in the diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and control of biological systems in the area of nanotechnology and has been referred by the National Institute of Health (NIH) as an emergent way of medicine. Nanoparticles are new delivery vehicles with the ability to release drugs to a specific cell type or tissue, which may also improve the pharmacological activity of those drugs by controlling their release, as well as prolonging their short half-lives in blood. The aim of this review is to gather several options of MOFs and nanotubes synthesised with different nanoparticles and processes, some including compound loading and release studies, with particular focus on 13 anti-cancer compounds e.g. doxorubicin, curcumin, methotrexate, etc.; 3 anti-inflammatory compounds, namely ibuprofen, salicylic acid and chlorogenic acid; and with 5 miscellaneous bioactive compounds, including rifampicin, griseofulvin, enoxacin, etc. Finally, other biomedical applications for these composites are shown, like being enzyme immobilisation agents, for water treatment e.g. in swimming pools, and other becoming support to carry & secure integrity of drugs.

Cancer is a disease caused by the alteration of proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, has a high prevalence in the population, and is one of the main causes of death worldwide. For its treatment, there are different therapy options; however, these are not always effective for all existing types of cancer, which gives rise to the search for new compounds. The objective of this work is to determine the degree of cytotoxic activity of naphthoxyacetamide using dose–response curves in a cell viability assay. For this, the cytotoxic effects of N-(2-morpholinoethyl)-2-(naphthalen-2-yloxy) were identified in cancer cells (HeLa) based on the metabolic reduction of 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenylretrazol (MTT) bromide. The cell cultures were seeded at a density of 5000 cells/well in 96-well plates and treated by hexapplication with various concentrations of the compounds to be tested (0.31–3.16 µM/mL) for 24 h. Microplates were read in an ELISA reader at 575 nm. The dose–response curve of N-(2-morpholinoethyl)-2-(naphthalen-2-yloxy)acetamide (3.16, 1.77, 1, 0.31 µM/mL) showed that at a concentration of 3.16 µM/mL, it presents cytotoxic effects similar to those shown by the drug reference (cisplatin 3.32 µM/mL). In conclusion, N-(2-morpholinoethyl)-2-(naphthalen-2-yloxy)acetamide showed cytotoxic effects similar to cisplatin.