Dr Ben Fraser
Organic Chemistry Task Leader, ANSTO Lifesciences
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a molecular imaging technique that gives detailed three- dimensional information on functional processes in the body. PET has established diagnostic applications in oncology, neurology and cardiology but is also proving extremely useful in drug discovery and for understanding disease pathology. [18F]Sulfonyl fluorides are a relatively unknown functional group for [18F]radiolabelling. We have systematically explored the effects of temperature, precursor amount, reaction time, precursor sterics, precursor electronics, presence of water and other nucleophiles upon the radiochemical yield and subsequent stability of various substituted [18F]arylsulfonyl fluorides. The findings from this study increases the very limited fundamental knowledge of [18F]sulfonyl fluoride radiochemistry and provides insight for the future design of [18F]sulfonyl fluoride based radiotracers.!
