New Capability to Radiolabel Formaldehyde Will Enable New Imaging and Environmental Studies

The Science

SC-supported scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have devised a simple, fast method for adding a radioactive tag to formaldehyde, a common organic chemical. Testing a variety of approaches, the Brookhaven team came up with a synthesis method using commercially available, inexpensive trimethylamine-N-oxide, that they found to be highly effective at converting carbon-11-labeled methyl iodide to carbon-11-labeled formaldehyde under mild conditions. Furthermore, the reactions require no special equipment and produce high yields of carbon-11-labeled formaldehyde after only a few minutes. The labeled formaldehyde has two major applications: (1) as a precursor to synthesize a whole new class of radiotracers, compounds that can be tracked by positron emission tomography (PET) scanners to monitor the movement and interactions of a wide range of chemicals in biological systems, and (2) to study and track formaldehyde as an environmental contaminant.

Principal Investigator

Jacob Hooker - Brookhaven National Laboratory

BER Program Manager

U.S. Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research (SC-33)
Biological Systems Science Division
[email protected]

References

Hooker, J. M., M. Schönberger, H. Schieferstein, J. S. Fowler. 2008. “A Simple, Rapid Method for the Preparation of [¹¹C]Formaldehyde,” Angewandte Chemie International Edition. DOI:10.1002/anie.200800991.

The study was led by Dr. Jacob Hooker with graduate students, Matthias Schönberger and Hanno Schieferstein of the University of Mainz.  The BNL scientists have also been contacted by Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) for a possible chemistry news story.