Production of Astatine-211 for U.S. Investigators
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States); University of Washington
The overall objective of the proposed research effort was to obtain methods and materials that allow personnel in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Washington (UW) to supply the alpha-particle emitting radionuclide astatine-211 (211At) to U.S. investigators at other academic sites or companies for their research interests. To accomplish the overall objective, we: (1) optimized production on the UW cyclotron, (2) developed a robust wet chemistry method for efficiently of 211At from the irradiated target, (3) evaluated a semiautomated system for isolation of 211At, and (4) conducted a trial shipment of 211At to confirm that all of the required procedures were in place for handling and shipping 211At. Optimization of the irradiation parameters determined that 211At could be produced by irradiation of bismuth targets at 29 MeV running at beam amperages of up to 55 µA. Using those irradiation parameters, we demonstrated that a 4-hour irradiation could produced >100 mCi of 211At. Isolation of the 211At from the irradiated bismuth target by a “wet chemistry” approach was optimized, providing ~80% decay corrected recovery or 60% actual yield from beginning of isolation. Obtaining highly purified 211At required a final distillation, which resulted in ~50% overall isolated yields. Our attempts to develop a “semi-automated” isolation process were fraught with difficulties. While we did show that the approach worked, it was deemed that the available instrumentation was inadequate to obtain a robust method. Thus, we have submitted a follow-up funding application in collaboration with investigators at PNNL (Matt O’Hara) to develop a fully automated system which takes advantage of novel separation and purification approaches. Finally, an 211At shipment was made to the University of Missouri (Dr. Tom Quinn) to demonstrate that shipments could be made. At this time, the requisite paperwork from DOE to set up an agreement for supplying 211At through their distribution system has not been put into place. When that agreement is in place we will be ready to produce and ship 211At to investigators at other institutions.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0004046
- OSTI ID:
- 1124492
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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