Production methods
1. LU-176 (N, Γ) ¹⁷⁷LuThe ¹⁷⁶Lu isotope is irradiated in a reactor and is produced by direct reaction ¹⁷⁶Lu (n,γ) ¹⁷⁷Lu As a result – ¹⁷⁷Lu with a sufficiently high specific activity. However, this method has a number of disadvantages:- As a result – ¹⁷⁷Lu with carrier, which limits its sphere of application in nuclear medicine.
- This method leads to appearance in the received ¹⁷⁷Lu impurity long-lived activity of Lu-177m with a half-life of 160 days.
2. ¹⁷⁶Yb (N, Γ) ¹⁷⁷Yb→ ¹⁷⁷LuThe ¹⁷⁷Lu isotope is obtained by the reaction ¹⁷⁶Yb (n,γ) ¹⁷⁷Yb followed by beta decay ¹⁷⁷Yb till ¹⁷⁷Lu. Compared with the previous method, this method has several advantages:- When implementing this scheme, theoretical specific activity is much higher than in the previous method.
- In the implementation of this scheme, ¹⁷⁷Lu is formed without a “harmful” carrier.