Biomedical researchers would like to be able to deliver chemicals directly to a cell nucleus-cancer therapy being one reason. UCLA chemist Fred Hawthorne may have discovered a chemical "roach motel" that provides entry to but no exit from the nucleus. He found the passageway while trying to get boron-rich compounds into cells in studies of a cancer treatment called boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). In BNCT, boron atoms interact with neutron beams to create an unstable isotope that blows apart, as if the neutron had tripped a landmine inside the cell.

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