Production of Zirconium-89 and the Development of Zr-89 Radiopharmaceuticals

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) technique is an exciting tool in nuclear medicine capable of imaging biological processes up to subcellular concentrations at molecular level. Although the short half-life PET radiopharmaceuticals have been available for more than 3 decades, tracing and quantification of slow biological processes and molecules with longer biological half-lives have only been recently possible using PET tracers with longer half-lives including I-124 and Zr-89. Among those, Zr-89 has attracted higher value especially in the pharmacokinetics studies and clinical evaluation of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and large proteins due to attractive physicochemical properties. This Coordinated Research Project (CRP) will identify new technical aspects of the targetry, production and quality control of Zr-89 radioisotope and related radiopharmaceuticals with slow pharmacokinetics especially mAbs.