Production and separation of terbium-149 and terbium-152 for targeted cancer therapy

This work reports the production and separation of useful quantities of 149,152Tb from natural neodymium (natNd) and 141Pr for in vitro studies by bombarding the targets with 12C projectiles. The physical, chemical and nuclear properties of radionuclides determine their efficacy in therapy and diagnosis. Tb-149 is an alpha-emitter with a half-life of 4.1h and 152Tb is a positron emitter with a half-life of 17.5 h. Both of the isotopes have suitable gamma emission with good branching ratio suggesting their application to diagnosis apart from therapy. Alpha-emitters are effective in controlling cancer because of their short range and high Relative Biological Effectiveness. Long-lived positron emitters are effective in studying physiological function in positron emission tomography other than therapy. The aim of this work is to optimise the production and carrier free separation of terbium. Because of the presence of other stable isotopes in natNd, a number of other lanthanides are produced by secondary reactions during the production of terbium. In order to remove the secondary products, α-hydroxyisobutyric acid of pH 5 was used as eluent. satisfactory separation of terbium was achieved and demonstrate that useful quantities of 144,152Tb can be produced by Tandem accelerator from 141Pr and natNd targets