2-Deoxy-2-fluoro-D-glucose is an almost ideal tracer for D-glucose transport and metabolic uptake, with the limitation however that the cyclotron-produced positron-emitter “F isotope has a short half-life and, consequently, the use of 18F-labelled glucose derivatives for medical imaging is necessarily heavily restricted. Consequently, there has been a general search for D-glucose analogues in which iodine isotope gamma-emitters would be the detector group. Unfortunately, the corresponding iodo analogue of 2-deoxy-2-fluoro-D-glucose, namely 2-deoxy-2iodo-D-glucose, is notably unstablele3. Other simple iodo derivatives of D-glucose, of variable stability, have been prepared2.4-7. Our current approach to suitable iodinated D-glucose tracers aims at the compounds in which the supplementary iodine-bearing group, while being stable enough, would be as small as possible so as to minimize unfavorable interactions with the D-glucose transporter8P9. The known stability10-‘3 of P-iodoethers prompted us to incorporate this unit into a D-glucose skeleton. This approach has already resulted in the preparation of 2-iodoethyl P-D-glucopyranoside14, a close analogue of propyl P-D-glucopyranoside, but which does not compete with D-glucose for entry into the ce1115. Since 3-O-p ro py I-D-glucose is known to compete with the natural substrate for its passive transport 16, the preparation of the corresponding 2-iodoether 1 became the target of choice. For the synthesis of 3-0-(2-iodoethylj-D-glucose Cl), literature methods for the direct introduction17-23 of a P-iodoether cannot be applied. Among other approaches tried, it is noteworthy that reaction of the silyl or sulfonyl derivatives of 2-iodoethanol gave only products resulting from an attack of the oxyanion derived