Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is a binary modality that is used to treat a variety of malignancies, using neutrons to irradiate boron-10 (¹⁰B) nuclei that have entered tumor cells to produce highly linear energy transfer (LET) alpha particles and recoil ⁷Li nuclei (¹⁰B [n, α] ⁷Li). Therefore, the most important part in BNCT is to selectively deliver a large number of ¹⁰B to tumor cells and only a small amount to normal tissue. So far, BNCT has been used in more than 2000 cases worldwide, and the efficacy of BNCT in the treatment of head and neck cancer, malignant meningioma, melanoma and hepatocellular carcinoma has been confirmed. We collected and collated clinical studies of second-generation boron delivery agents. The combination of different drugs, the mode of administration, and the combination of multiple treatments have an important impact on patient survival. We summarized the critical issues that must be addressed, with the hope that the next generation of boron delivery agents will overcome these challenges.

Design processes of a large-scale negative ion accelerator for neutral beam injection (NBI) application involve a series of physics and engineering issues, which include high voltage holding, background gas and stripping losses, beamlets optics and steering, particle and power flux on the grid electrodes, heat removal, thermal deformation, and stress of the grids. A self-consistent design model covering all these critical issues has been developed, where the results of one design aspect can be directly plugged into another one as the input conditions with little approximation or assumption. This design model has been applied to the negative ion accelerator of the NBI test facility of CRAFT (Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology), which is designed to produce a negative hydrogen ion beam of 25 A with the particle energy of 400 keV and the pulse duration of 3600 s. The accelerated current density is required to be 210 A/m² from 768 apertures with a diameter of 14 mm. The evaluated results of the CRAFT accelerator design are quantitatively analyzed. Additionally, the modeling is applied to a large-scale and relatively complete structure of the multi-grid electrodes. Hence, some nonuniformities or special distributions appear in different design issues, which were not noticed in the reference works.