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Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry pp 207–220Cite as

The Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry of Carbon-11: Basic Principles

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Abstract

Carbon-11 is an accelerator-produced, positron-emitting radionuclide. Its physical half-life of 20.4 min is sufficiently long to allow for multistep syntheses while short enough to enable multiple PET scans of the same individual on the same day. Carbon-11’s short half-life is also advantageous with respect to the radiation dose to the subject undergoing investigation; indeed, for most carbon-11 PET tracers, up to four administrations to healthy volunteers can be accepted. The radionuclide decays almost exclusively via positron emission (β+), and the emitted particle has a maximum energy of 0.960 MeV. Carbon-11 is produced using a cyclotron in high molar activity, a prerequisite for the tracer principle which underlies the very concept for PET. From the precursor [11C]carbon dioxide, a large number of secondary precursors can be synthesized, thus creating a wide range of opportunities for labeling biologically relevant compounds. Undoubtedly, the most useful of all these secondary precursors is [11C]methyl iodide due to the presence of methylated heteroatoms in many drugs and naturally occurring biomolecules.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. PET Centre, Uppsala University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden

    Gunnar Antoni

Authors
  1. Gunnar Antoni
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Correspondence to Gunnar Antoni .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

    Jason S. Lewis

  2. Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Albert D. Windhorst

  3. Department of Chemistry, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Brian M. Zeglis

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Antoni, G. (2019). The Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry of Carbon-11: Basic Principles. In: Lewis, J., Windhorst, A., Zeglis, B. (eds) Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98947-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98947-1_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98946-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98947-1

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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