New materials for cancer imaging and therapy

The increasing burden of cancer on society drives the development of more effective chemotherapeutic agents. The work in this thesis is therefore centred on the examination of a new series of metal-based anticancer prodrug candidates. These metal-based compounds do not exhibit toxicity in the dark, but can be activated with light in cancerous areas, avoiding unwanted side-effects in healthy tissues. A range of state-of-the- art spectroscopic techniques, including vibrational spectroscopy and synchrotron radiation, are applied to study the chemical and biological properties of these compounds, revealing new insights into their mechanism of action.