Abstract
Four terbium radioisotopes (149, 152, 155, 161Tb) constitute a potential theranostic quartet for cancer treatment but require any derived radiopharmaceutical to be essentially free of impurities. Terbium-155 prepared by proton irradiation and on-line mass separation at the CERN-ISOLDE and CERN-MEDICIS facilities contains radioactive 139Ce16O and also zinc or gold, depending on the catcher foil used. A method using ion-exchange and extraction chromatography resins in two column separation steps has been developed to isolate 155Tb with a chemical yield of ≥95% and radionuclidic purity ≥99.9%. Conversion of terbium into a form suitable for chelation to targeting molecules in diagnostic nuclear medicine is presented. The resulting 155Tb preparations are suitable for the determination of absolute activity, SPECT phantom imaging studies and pre-clinical trials.
Highlights
Alternative methods of producing these isotopes have been investigated (Table 2)[8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]
We present a simple method for producing radiologically pure terbium preparations in a chemical form suitable for chelation to targeting molecules as well as for absolute activity measurements and phantom imaging studies
The chemical purification method proposed here (Fig. 5) allows the quantitative separation of 155Tb from a zinc and/or gold matrix and from 139Ce impurities produced by spallation at the CERN-ISOLDE and CERN-MEDICIS facilities
Summary
Alternative methods of producing these isotopes have been investigated (Table 2)[8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. Especially neighbouring elements, have similar chemical properties due to small differences in their ionic size/charge ratio, making the isolation of high purity individual lanthanide solutions challenging[16]
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