Preparation of no-carrier added 16-131I-hexadecanoic acid via halogen exchange: Comparison between two methods

A simple method for labelling of 16-Br-hexadecanoic acid (16-BrHDA) with radioactive iodine has been reported via nucleophilic¹³¹I-for-Br exchange in the dry state and in organic solvents. While preparation in some organic solvents such as acetic acid, dimethyl formamide (DMF) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) required reaction times of more than 2 hours to give yields of 20–50%, halogen exchange in dry state at temperature of about 100 °C gave rise to yields of about 94% of radiochemically pure 16-¹³¹IHDA within 5 min. The labelling product could be purified by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and was shown to be free of significant radiochemical impurities.