Improved Yields of Iodine-124 from the Enriched Tellurium-124 Dioxide/Aluminum Oxide Target

Abstract

The escalating clinical application of Positron Emission Tomography results from the novel radiotracers which are available to monitor specific biochemical or physiologic processes. Future developments of the technique will require an increasing availability of additional unique radioligands and radionuclides. Iodine-124, a radionuclide whose potential for both diagnostic and therapeutic applications is widely recognized, has been prepared at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on a weekly basis for several years (1). With its characteristic 4.18 day half life and complex decay scheme (2) which includes positron emission (22.0 + 0.5%) and electron capture (78 + 0.5%), this radionuclide has been shown to be appropriate for radiotracers describing slow physiologic processes with the clearance of nonspecific radioactivity. The refinements and modifications being engineered into the cyclotron target system to increase the absolute yield of recoverable radioactivity from each irradiation and its chemical processing of the reusable solid target matrix are described..