Impact
In the radiopharmaceutical marketing, the employment of low cost polymeric materials and photolithographic techniques for the fabrication of devices and the modular architecture is supposed to reduce the cost of the devices and increase the advantages for the purchasers. At the same time, the use of micro reactors in organic chemistry has been demonstrated to give faster reactions and to improve product yields with greater selectivity compared with conventional bench top methodology [1]. As consequence, high purity radiopharmaceuticals could be produced employing cheap devices, which also offer the advantage to be discarded after use, thus overcoming the problem of performing an efficient cleaning of reactors after each radiosynthesis. Furthermore, equipping each module of the device with suitable boxes, the radiations could be easily shielded, with consequent reduction of the risk level for the operators and considerable decrease of space and resources required for conventional radiosynthetic equipments. Since the safety of operators will be increased, less qualified personnel will be needed for radiochemistry.
Advantages of radiochemistry on chip compared with traditional macro devices.
Therefore, given this view in the PET chemistry and microfluidic world, the impact level of such a project in the field of massive production and research of new radiopharmaceuticals is thought to be relevant both in the academic and industrial world.
[1]. a) T. Bayer , M. Kinzl, A. Lohf, N. Schadler “SIPROCESS - A New Automated Open Modular Micro Process System for Process Development and Production”, ACHEMA, Frankfurt am Main, 2006; b) P. D. I. Fletcher et al.Tetrahedron 2002, 4735.
