2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose production: correlation between yield and eob activity

2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose ([18F]FDG) production is a routine synthesis process, involving fully automated synthesizer with single-use disposable system - integrated fluidic processor (IFP cassette) and overall synthesis time of 30 minutes. The synthesis of [18F]FDG is a six-step process consisting of two chemical reactions, a nucleophilic 18F- fluorination followed by a base-catalyzed hydrolysis. 18F- is produced by irradiating enriched [18O]-water with protons with GE PETtrace 16.5 MeV cyclotron, at University Institute of Positron Emission Tomography, Skopje. The amount of starting radioactivity depends on the desired radioactivity of final product, so because of that, our objective was to determine whether amount of starting radioactivity affects the radiolabeling efficiency and the capacity of starting materials or the production yield. Forty batches of [18F]FDG were produced with same IFP cassette and the same reagent kit (different batch production but same producer). The mean decay corrected production yield for [18F]FDG produced by starting radioactivity of 18F- from 20-35 GBq, 55-75 GBq and 150-170 GBq were 71,44% ± 5,5%, 70,13% ± 5,5% and 67,11% ± 2.3%, respectively. The results confirm that the starting radioactivity of radioisotope does not affect the production yield and there is no significant difference between the results in these three groups of results, p>0.05 (0.069). [18F]FDG was successfully synthesized with a production yield above 60% in all batches, as result of the high-quality and the large capacity of starting materials for radioactivity to give efficient radiochemical synthesis