Chelating ion-exchange methods for the preparation of no-carrier-added Cu

Watanabe, Shigeki; Watanabe, Satoshi; Liang, J. X.; Hanaoka, Hirofumi*; Endo, Keigo*; Ishioka, Noriko

We have developed a production method for no-carrier-added copper-64 (Cu) by using chelating resin bearing iminodiacetic acid groups. We optimized the condition for selective separation of radioactive copper by using chelating resin from nickel and cobalt. Radioactive copper was separated completely using 0.1 M and 2 M HCl solution. In production of no-carrier-added Cu, the average 87% of Cu was isolated from the NiO target with high radionuclide purity ( 99%). In order to investigate the quality of the obtained Cu, metallic impurities contained in the Cu solution were analyzed by means of inductive coupled-plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) and optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). It was observed that extremely low amounts of metal ion were contained in the Cu. The Cu solution showed high specific activity (average: 594.7 GBq/mol). In this study, the chelating exchange method yielded high-quality of Cu sufficient for the synthesis of Cu-labeled radiopharmaceuticals and medical applications.