Insights into Elution of Anion Exchange Cartridges: Opening the Path toward Aliphatic 18F-Radiolabeling of Base-Sensitive Tracers

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Aliphatic nucleophilic substitution (SN2) with [18F]fluoride is the most widely applied method to prepare 18F-labeled positron emission tomography (PET) tracers. Strong basic conditions commonly used during 18F-labeling procedures inherently limit or prohibit labeling of base-sensitive scaffolds. The high basicity stems from the tradition to trap [18F]fluoride on anion exchange cartridges and elute it afterward with basic anions. This sequence is used to facilitate the transfer of [18F]fluoride from an aqueous to an aprotic organic, polar reaction medium, which is beneficial for SN2 reactions. Furthermore, this sequence also removes cationic radioactive contaminations from cyclotron-irradiated [18O]water from which [18F]fluoride is produced. In this study, we developed an efficient elution procedure resulting in low basicity that permits SN2 18F-labeling of base-sensitive scaffolds. Extensive screening of trapping and elution conditions (>1000 experiments) and studying their influence on the radiochemical yield (RCY) allowed us to identify a suitable procedure for this. Using this procedure, four PET tracers and three synthons could be radiolabeled in substantially higher RCYs (up to 2.5-fold) compared to those of previously published procedures, even from lower precursor amounts. Encouraged by these results, we applied our low-basicity method to the radiolabeling of highly base-sensitive tetrazines, which cannot be labeled using state-of-Art direct aliphatic 18F-labeling procedures. Labeling succeeded in RCYs of up to 20%. We believe that our findings facilitate PET tracer development by opening the path toward simple and direct SN2 18F fluorination of base-sensitive substrates.

Original languageEnglish
JournalACS Pharmacology and Translational Science
Volume4
Issue number5
Pages (from-to)1556–1566
ISSN2575-9108
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This project received funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 813528. M.M.H. received funding from the European Union’s EU Framework Program for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (grant agreement no. 670261). V.S. was supported by BRIDGE – Translational Excellence Program at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation (grant agreement no. NNF18SA0034956). The Lundbeck Foundation, the Innovation Fund Denmark, and the Research Council for Independent Research are further acknowledged.

    Research areas

  • aliphatic radiolabeling, anion-exchange, base sensitivity, elution conditions, fluorine-18, QMA

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