Research and technological development of beta-emitting radiopharmaceuticals produced with radioactive ion beams

An innovative method is proposed for the production of carrier-free \uf062- radiopharmaceuticals, based on the Isotope Separation On-Line (ISOL) technique in the framework of the SPES (Selective Production of the Exotic Species) project. SPES is a nuclear physics project under advanced construction at Legnaro National Laboratories of INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare). The innovation of the method relies not only on the new physical technique but mainly on the final product. The class of radiopharmaceutical obtainable, indeed, can be considered completely new, since they have a high purity in terms of specific activity (5 orders of magnitude bigger than traditional ones); specific activity is the ratio between radioactivity and mass of the element