LetterLetters to the Editor

Al18F: A New Standard for Radiofluorination

David M. Goldenberg, Robert M. Sharkey, William J. McBride and Otto C. Boerman
Journal of Nuclear Medicine July 2013, 54 (7) 1170; DOI: https://doi.org/10.2967/jnumed.113.125245

TO THE EDITOR: 18F is the most common radionuclide used in PET imaging, but its application via a rapid, simple, easily accessible labeling procedure has been challenging. We congratulate Wan et al. for their recent article appearing online on April 3 and in the printed journal in May (1) on the clinical validation of the Al18F labeling method involving an RGD peptide labeled essentially by applying the facile, 1-step method first reported in 2009 (2). Subsequent improvements also have been described (3–5), including the first report of a kit formulation of a peptide for additional simplification and enhancement of the Al18F labeling procedure (3). It is gratifying to read the utility of this procedure applied to a specific RGD peptide, alfatide, for successful imaging of lung cancer, confirming the Al18F labeling of RGD described recently by the National Institutes of Health group, as well as Liu et al. in 2011 (6), Shetty et al. in 2012 (7), and Dijkgraaf et al. in 2013 (8). This technique now can be extended to other peptides for simple radiofluorination, not requiring an on-site cyclotron by using sodium fluoride commonly available for bone imaging (3). By translation of the Al18F procedure into clinical practice, the extensive research and development conducted—which has been reviewed elsewhere (9)—has now been validated for the first time in humans.

DISCLOSURE

The Al18F project was supported in part by the National Center for Research Resources and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health through grant 5-R44-RR-028018-03. Drs. Goldenberg, Sharkey, and McBride are employed by and have stock in Immunomedics, Inc. Drs. Goldenberg and McBride are inventors of 10 U.S. patents issued on Al18F technology. No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this letter was reported.

Footnotes

  • Published online May 17, 2013.

REFERENCES

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