Development of an improved separation system for Hg-197 from proton-irradiated gold targets

Recent years have witnessed a boom in the development of radiopharmaceuticals, a novel cancer treatment. A key contributor to this endeavor is securing a stable supply of medical radionuclides. Mercury-197 has great potentials in radiopharmaceutical development thanks to its desirable decay properties. However, there exists a lack of separation strategies for this radionuclide. This work aims at addressing this problem. Mercury-197 is produced by irradiating natural gold with protons. Firstly, the standardization of a published column chromatography separation method with LN resin was performed. Later, the distribution coefficients of mercury and gold were measured on six resins to study their chemical behavior, aiming to find a superior method to using the LN resin. Furthermore, a second column filled with Weak Base Extraction Chromatographic (WBEC) resin was applied to both ready the 197Hg for subsequent radiolabeling and reduce the amount of co-existing impurities found in the purified 197Hg solution.