preparation and quality control of 68ga-citrate for pet applications

Objective(s): in nuclear medicine studies, gallium-68 (68ga) citrate has been recently known as a suitable infection agent in positron emission tomography (pet). in this study, by applying an in-house produced 68ge/68ga generator, a simple technique for the synthesis and quality control of 68ga-citrate was introduced; followed by preliminary animal studies. methods: 68gacl3 eluted from the generator was studied in terms of quality control factors including radiochemical purity (assessed by hplc and rtlc), chemical purity (assessed by icp-eos), radionuclide purity (evaluated by hpge), and breakthrough. 68ga-citrate was prepared from eluted 68gacl3 and sodium citrate under various reaction conditions. stability of the complex was evaluated in human serum for 2 h at 370c, followed by biodistribution studies in rats for 120 min. results: 68ga-citrate was prepared with acceptable radiochemical purity (>97 itlc and >98% hplc), specific activity (4-6 gbq/mm), chemical purity (sn, fe<0.3 ppm and zn<0.2 ppm) within 15 min at 500c. the biodistribution of 68ga-citrate was consistent with former reports up to 120 minutes. conclusion: this study demonstrated the possible in-house preparation and quality control of 68ga-citrate, using a commercially available 68ge/68ga generator for pet imaging throughout the country.