Boranophosphate

First developed in the Shaw lab in 1990, boranophosphates have great potential as therapeutic and diagnostic agents, as the modification confers many unique properties. (Sood 1990) The boranophosphate resembles the normal phosphate in that the negative charge is retained; however, the polarity of the molecule changes because the negative charge is localized on the remaining non-bridging oxygen. (He 1998) Partitioning experiments have demonstrated that boranophosphates are more lipophilic than normal phosphates; (Shaw 2000) this could allow for increased cellular uptake and targeted delivery. In addition, boranophosphates have increased nuclease resistance without affecting activation of RNase H cleavage of RNA in RNA: boranophosphate hybrids. (Shaw 2000)