Use of 1,8-bis-(dimethylamino)-naphtalene/H18F complex as new radiofluorinating agent

Radiopharmaceuticals containing an 18F label are of increasing interest due to their utilization in PET imaging. However, the bottleneck in these applications is the limited methods available for introduction of this radionuclide into biologically interesting molecules. In this work, we have evaluated a new radiofluorination method based on the properties of the complex between 1,8-(dimethylamino)-naphthalene (PS) and [18F]-HF. The results obtained on various model substrates suggest that, in some limited cases, this new procedure can be regarded as a possible alternative to the traditional nucleophilic route using K222/K2CO3 in CH3CN. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.