Welcome to the Rendina Group website.
Our research group is primarily interested in the medicinal chemistry of boron and gadolinium.
We are heavily involved in the development of new agents for an exciting experimental cancer treatment known as neutron capture therapy (NCT), one of the few groups in the world to be involved in this area of research. Our collaborators include eminent researchers at the Brain and Mind Research Institute and Tsukuba University (Japan). To date, we have discovered several new classes of DNA-, mitochondrial- and tumour-targeted compounds and we are currently exploring their use as potential BNCT and GdNCT agents.
We are also interested in the use of boron clusters, in particular the carboranes, as unique classes of pharmacophore in medicinal chemistry. Perhaps boron really is the new carbon!
Our research is funded by organizations including the Australian Research Council, The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, Cure Cancer Australia Foundation and The National Breast Cancer Foundation.