# Is 70Zn(d,x)67Cu the best way to produce 67Cu for medical applications?

Etienne Nigron, Arnaud Guertin, Ferid Haddad, Thomas Sounalet

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Etienne Nigron, Arnaud Guertin, Ferid Haddad, Thomas Sounalet. Is 70Zn(d,x)67Cu the best way to produce 67Cu for medical applications?. Advances in Radioactive Isotope Science (ARIS), Jun 2023, Avignon, France. pp.96/501, 10.5281/zenodo.10655037. hal-04521373

HAL Id: hal-04521373

https://hal.science/hal-04521373

Submitted on 26 Mar 2024

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# Is 70Zn(d,x)67Cu the best way to produce 67Cu for medical applications?

**Auteur:** Etienne NIGRON<fnref n="1" />

**Co-auteurs:** Arnaud Guertin <fnref n="2" />; Férid Haddad <fnref n="3" />; Thomas Sounalet <fnref n="4" />

**Auteur correspondant:** nigron@arronax-nantes.fr

The theranostic approach combines diagnostic and therapy towards personalised treatment for patients. Among the different possibilities, associating two radionuclides of the same element is appealing, one for imaging purpose and the other for therapy. Copper offers such a pair of radionuclides with 64Cu (T1/2=12.7 h) allowing PET imaging and 67Cu (T1/2=61.8 h) for targeted beta therapy. If for 64Cu the production route is well defined (a biomedical cyclotron delivering protons on a 64Ni target), this is not the case for 67Cu. Many production routes have been explored using neutrons, charged particles or photons. For charged particles, the main challenge relies on the limitation of 64Cu co-production, even if its real impact on the patient and staff radioprotection needs to be studied and clarified. This work aims at identifying and studying an optimized production route for 67Cu while limiting the impact of 64Cu.

Within this frame, a preliminary research identified the production route 70Zn(d,x). We have measured its production cross sections for 67Cu up to 30 MeV. Measurements were done using the well-known stacked foils technique on 97.5 % enriched 70Zn homemade electroplated targets. Beam intensity has been obtained using an instrumented Faraday cup. Cross sections were also measured for the monitor reactions natTi(d,x)48V and natNi(d,x)61Cu. They complement at higher incident energies the only set of data available in nuclear databases. The maximum of the cross section is reached for an incident energy of 23 MeV. Its value, 30 mb, is twice higher than the one obtained with a proton irradiation. With deuterons below 26 MeV, 64Cu production is limited and directly connected to the enrichment of the target. Using this data, the production yield was calculated and production optimization parameters were proposed (energy incident of the deuteron, thickness crossed by the particles, irradiation time, waiting time).

This production route is of great interest as it limits strongly the production of 64Cu that is directly linked to the level of 68Zn impurity in the target. Using a 26 MeV deuteron beam and an enriched 70Zn target, it is then possible to produce high purity 67Cu. Activity of 16.4 GBq can be obtained for 26 MeV and 80 µA beam crossing 576 µm of 70Zn thickness during 40 hours. By waiting 70 minutes after irradiation for decays, the activity of 67Cu reaches 99.99 % of the total cooper activity and, at this time, the specific activity is 1.87 GBq/nmol or 27.9 TBq/mg. This specific activity value is very close to the theoretical maximum (28 TBq/mg). This production route can be of interest for future linear accelerators under development where mA deuteron beams can be available if adequate targetry is developed.

# The *N* = 126 Factory: A new multi-nucleon transfer reaction facility at Argonne National Laboratory

**Auteur:** Adrian Valverde<fnref n="1" />

**Co-auteurs:** Maxime Brodeur <fnref n="2" />; Jason Clark <fnref n="1" />; Alicen Houff <fnref n="2" />; Russell Knaack <fnref n="1" />; Biying Liu <fnref n="3" />; Guy Savard <fnref n="1" />; Kumar Sharma <fnref n="4" />; John Rohrer <fnref n="1" />; Bruce Zabransky <fnref n="1" />

<footnote n="1">¹ GIP ARRONAX</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² CNRS/IN2P3</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ SUBATECH, GIP ARRONAX</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ CNRS/IN2P3/SUBATECH</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ Argonne National Laboratory</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² University of Notre Dame</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ University of Notre Dame/Argonne National Laboratory</footnote>