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Researchers report fastest purification of astatine-211 needed for targeted cancer therapy
Astatine-211 recovery from bismuth metal using a chromatography system. Unlike bismuth, astatine-211 forms chemical bonds with ketones.
In a recent study, Texas A&M University researchers have described a new process to purify astatine-211, a promising radioactive isotope for targeted cancer treatment. Unlike other elaborate purification methods, their technique can extract astatine-211 from bismuth in minutes rather than hours, which can greatly reduce the time between production and delivery to the patient.
“Astatine-211 is currently under evaluation as a cancer therapeutic in clinical trials. But the problem is that the supply chain for this element is very limited because only a few places worldwide can make it,” said Jonathan Burns, research scientist in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Nuclear Engineering and Science Center. “Texas A&M University is one of a handful of places in the world that can make astatine-211, and we have delineated a rapid astatine-211 separation process that increases the usable quantity of this isotope for research and therapeutic purposes.”
The researchers added that this separation method will bring Texas A&M one step closer to being able to provide astatine-211 for distribution through the Department of Energy’s Isotope Program’s National Isotope Development Center as part of the University Isotope Network.
Details on the chemical reaction to purify astatine-211 are in the journal Separation and Purification Technology.
Yoshiki Matsuzawa et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 2 | February 2009 | Pages 76-81
Technical Paper | Seventh International Conference on Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | dx.doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A6986
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasma is a high-beta elongated compact toroid only with a poloidal field. Since the plasma torus does not link with confinement coil and vacuum vessel, the FRC can be translated from the formation region to confinement region along the external guide field. In this work, the effects of particle, flux and energy supply to the FRC due to the interaction with background neutral particles has been investigated. Translating an FRC plasma through a neutral gas background is equivalent to the injection of neutral beam end-on into the FRC. The experiments were performed on NUCTE-III and NUCTE-III/T. Due to the effects of back ground particle injection during translation process, the loss rate of particle, flux and energy were reduced.