A comparison of 67CU production by proton (67 TO 12 MEV) induced reactions on NATZN and on enriched 68ZN/70ZN

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Because of its suitable decay characteristics and favourable chemical behaviour, 67Cu is considered to have potential for application in radionuclide therapy. This has led to increasing interest in biochemical, preclinical and clinical studies with 67Cu‐labelled radiopharmaceuticals.67Cu can be produced in accelerators by bombarding a natZn‐ (1) or 68Zn target with protons (2) or by bombarding 67Zn with neutrons in a high flux reactor (3). At the present time we produce up to 3.7 Gbq of 67Cu at the 72 MeV accelerator of the Paul Scherrer Institute by irradiating natZn. In order to scale up the 67Cu production, we evaluated the use of 68Zn and 70Zn. Cross sections were measured using the reactions 65Cu(p, n)65Zn of monitor foils (4), natZn(p, 2pxn)67Cu in the p‐energy‐range 67 to 12 MeV, 68Zn(p, 2p)67Cu in the p‐energy range 67 to 45MeV and 70Zn(p, 2p2n)67Cu (5) in the p‐energy range 45 to 12 MeV. Results indicate that the use of 68Zn as target instead of natZn leads to a 4.5 — fold increase in 67Cu production and that the use of 70Zn leads to a 10–20‐fold increase in the 20–30 MeV energy range.