The positron emission tomography (PET) molecular imaging technique has gained its universal value as a remarkable tool for medical diagnosis and biomedical research. Carbon-11 is one of the promising radiotracers that can report target-specific information related to its pharmacology and physiology to understand the disease status. Currently, many of the available carbon-11 (t 1/2 = 20.4 min) PET radiotracers are heterocyclic derivatives that have been synthesized using carbon-11 inserted different functional groups obtained from primary and secondary carbon-11 precursors. A spectrum of carbon-11 PET radiotracers has been developed against many of the upregulated and emerging targets for the diagnosis, prognosis, prediction, and therapy in the fields of oncology, cardiology, and neurology. This review focuses on the carbon-11 radiochemistry and various target-specific PET molecular imaging agents used in tumor, heart, brain, and neuroinflammatory disease imaging along with its associated pathology.
Positron emission tomography (PET) using O‐(2‐[18F]fluoroethyl)‐L‐tyrosine ([18F]FET) has shown great success in differentiating tumor recurrence from necrosis. In this study, we are reporting the experience of synthesis [18F]FET by varying the concentration of TET precursor in different chemistry modules. TET precursor (2–10 mg) was used for the synthesis of [18F]FET in an automated (MX Tracerlab) module (n = 6) and semiautomated (FX2N Tracerlab) module (n = 19). The quality control was performed for all the preparations. For human imaging, 220 ± 50 MBq of [18F]FET was briefly injected into the patient to acquire PET‐MR images. The radiochemical purity was greater than 95% for the final product in both modules. The decay corrected average yield was 10.7 ± 4.7% (10 mg, n = 3) and 8.2 ± 2.6% (2 mg, n = 3) with automated chemistry module and 36.7 ± 7.3% (8–10 mg, n = 12), 26.4 ± 3.1% (5–7 mg, n = 4), and 35.1 ± 3.8% (2–4 mg, n = 3) with semiautomated chemistry modules. The PET imaging showed uptake at the lesion site (SUVmax = 7.5 ± 2.6) and concordance with the MR image. The [18F]FET was produced with a higher radiochemical yield with 2.0 mg of the precursor with substantial yield and is suitable for brain tumor imaging.
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