Production of ¹⁴C- and ¹¹C-labelled biomolecules using ionised gases

Abstract

To establish a rapid method for eventual use in incorporating ¹¹C into important biomolecules, we have studied the interaction of ionised gases with a number of natural products. Our findings on the degradation of cholesterol induced by ionised gases¹ led us to anticipate that such labelling might occur if the gas contained a radio-active label and we present results with ¹⁴CO which verify the feasibility of the method. The same approach could also be used with ¹¹C, a positron-emitter which is too short lived for most conventional organic chemical labelling procedures². The resulting tracer biomolecules should have widespread applications in chemistry, biochemistry, biology and nuclear medicine.