Liquid-Liquid Extraction Process for High Efficiency Rapid Purification of Copper Radionuclides

According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research, the global market for radiopharmaceuticals was valued at approximately 3.8 billion USD in 2011 and is expected to reach 12.2 billion USD by 2018 (2013). Usually, these radiopharmaceuticals consist of three major components: 1) a biomolecule (BM) responsible for receptor targeting; 2) a bifunctional chelate (BFC) for radionuclide coordination; and 3) a radionuclide for imaging and/or radiotherapy. Specific activity (SA) is one of the most important parameters for characterizing the quality of radionuclides or radiotracers. In many cases, it is the limiting factor for using radiotracers in biological systems, especially when targeting low capacity receptors, or when there is a risk of inducing pharmacological side effects. Competition for the low abundance receptors can arise not only from unlabeled versions of the tracer molecule, but also from other molecules of related structures, such as byproducts from radiolabeling procedures. Therefore, achieving high SA is extremely important for radiopharmaceuticals that target proteins, such as tumor receptors, that are present in very low (nM or less) concentrations in vivo (Woods, Wiseman et al. 1980, Velikyan, Beyer et al. 2004, Velikyan, Beyer et al. 2008, Patil, Gada et al. 2012, Zeng, Lee et al. 2012). However, one of the major barriers to improving the effective Specific Activity of radiometals is contamination from a variety of non-radioactive metal contaminants. In addition to optimizing radiolabeling reactions and/or separation methods, removing the metal contaminants from radiometals is a direct and efficient approach to increasing the effective SA of metal-based radiotracers. A water oil separation device was created for the purpose of purifying Cu-64, for the application of the preparation of promising radiopharmaceutical compounds for diagnosis and radiotherapy. The membrane utilized in the device is capable of separating the aqueous solution from the organic solvent. Based on the data obtained from UV-Vis spectroscopy of the separated two phases that contain different colored dyes, the purity of either the water or the organic phase separated by the membrane is greater than 99 %