Production scale purification of Ge-68 and Zn-65 from irradiated gallium metal

Jonathan M Fitzsimmons; Leonard Mausner

doi:10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.03.012

Production scale purification of Ge-68 and Zn-65 from irradiated gallium metal

Appl Radiat Isot. 2015 Jul:101:60-64. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.03.012. Epub 2015 Mar 14.

Authors

Jonathan M Fitzsimmons¹, Leonard Mausner²

Affiliations

¹ Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bldg 801, Upton, NY 11973, USA. Electronic address: jfitzsimmons@bnl.gov.
² Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bldg 801, Upton, NY 11973, USA.

PMID: 25836978
DOI: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.03.012

Abstract

Germanium-68 (Ge-68) is produced by proton irradiation of a gallium metal target, purified by organic extraction and used in a medical isotope generator to produce Gallium-68 PET imaging agents. The purpose of this work was to implement a production scale separation of Ge-68 and Zn-65 that does not use organic solvents and uses a limited number of columns. The current separation approach was modified to use AG1 resin and/or Sephadex(©) G25 with zinc spikes to purify Ge-68 with near quantitative recovery. The purified Ge-68 meets DOE specifications. Methods utilizing zinc spikes resulted in the purist Ge-68 produced at Brookhaven National Lab with no other impurities by ICP-OES. During process optimization approximately 2.5 Ci of Ge-68 was purified utilizing the different processing methods, and the material was sold to the Nuclear Medicine community between 2012-2013.

Keywords: (68)Ga; (68)Ge; Gallium-68; Germanium-68; Radiochemical separation.