Synthesis of [<sup>18</sup>F]Fluoroform with High Molar Activity
Anna Pees, Albert D. Windhorst, Maria J.W.D. Vosjan, Vincent Tadino, Daniëlle J. Vugts
Abstract
Fluoroform is an interesting motif for the isotopologue labelling of biologically active compounds with fluorine‐18 for PET imaging. However, so far the building block [ 18 F]fluoroform and consequently the [ 18 F]trifluoromethylated products suffered from low molar activities ranging from 0.1 to 30 GBq/µmol due to isotopic dilution under the strongly basic standard radiofluorination conditions. In this article the synthesis of high molar activity [ 18 F]fluoroform is described. By implementing a recently reported novel radiofluorination reagent, [ 18 F]triflyl fluoride, the concentration of base‐cryptand complex in the reaction could be reduced 100‐fold compared to standard radiofluorination conditions and molar activities close to 100 GBq/µmol (at end of [ 18 F]fluoroform synthesis) could be obtained, enabling the imaging of low density receptors. Furthermore, an automated procedure was developed on the commercially available NEPTIS® perform synthesizer to provide access of high molar activity [ 18 F]fluoroform to other PET centres.