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Latest News
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.
Y. U. Nam
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 2 | February 2009 | Pages 180-184
Technical Paper | Seventh International Conference on Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | dx.doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A7009
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A 280 GHz single-channel horizontal millimeter-wave interferometer system has been installed for plasma electron density measurements on the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR). An electron density of plasma is measured on double-path horizontal line with triangular geometry. A cassette system contains two vacuum windows was installed on median port for these purpose. Maximum line-integrated electron density of first plasma is set to 1019 m-2 in this geometry. Since a line density of single-fringe in 280 GHz is 2 × 1018 m-2, a multi-fringe counting circuit has been adopted for a fringe-jump compensation. Measured IF signals are divided into 4 channels which has fringe counting capability of 1, 2, 4 and 8 fringes, respectively. A phase difference between IF signals is converted to DC voltage in each channel according to its fringe coverage. A fringe-jump analysis algorism has been developed for a discrimination of real fringe-jump from noise signal. An electron density of the KSTAR first plasma has been measured and analyzed using this system. Upon these results, an advanced fringe counting scheme will be proposed in this paper.
