Team Rendle

Team Rendle is based at the Ferrier Research Institute in Gracefield, Lower Hutt.

The central tenet of this team is to help improve the quality of people’s lives through chemistry. Examples include discovering new drugs and making research more efficient, effective, and safe.

Led by Dr Phillip Rendle, Deputy Director, Operations and Commercial, the team co-manages the Gracefield Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy facility. The facility's state-of-the-art instruments run 24/7 to perform complex and diverse analyses. NMR is a crucial analytical tool that the Institute uses heavily.

Dr Rendle’s team leads the Institute’s relationship with GlycoSyn, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) focusing on developing new drugs. The team also operates GlycoFineChem, the Institute’s online sales business, which specialises in providing chemicals for research that can’t be easily sourced from elsewhere.

The team offers consultancy services for new and established companies through Professor Richard Furneaux’s significant experience in polysaccharides, carbohydrates, chemical synthesis and analysis, patenting, and commercialisation of chemical products and technologies. This helps them navigate the next steps in developing their products.

The team also creates bespoke scientific software and equipment. The team has designed and built:

• an online chemical inventory system
• a hazard assessment tool for chemical reactions
• LED-based photochemical reactors
• syringe pumps
• a semi-automated system for the purification of crude natural extracts.

Other projects include:

• researching the use of indigenous knowledge to inform interrogation of plant extracts to discover new drugs
• developing improvements in the delivery of penicillin to prevent acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, arising from Group A streptococcal infection. This will help Māori, Pacific, and Aborigine populations, especially children.

Research in applied chemistry focuses on shorter-term, delivery-focused projects. Most of the projects have real-world applications—an environment in which the Team Rendle thrives.

For more information about Ferrier’s work in this field, please contact ferrier@vuw.ac.nz.

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