Considering the ever expanding use of gallium-68 (⁶⁸Ga) based radiopharmaceuticals in clinical applications worldwide, there is a growing interest in producing this nuclide in ways other than the traditional germanium-68/gallium-68 generator. Despite their widespread use and ease of operation, generators are limited in terms of their shelf-life, amount of [⁶⁸Ga]GaCl₃ per elution and time between elutions. Moreover the [⁶⁸Ga]GaCl₃ from the generator presents a serious risk of contamination of the final preparation with the long-lived parent nuclide: 68Ge (half-life 271 days).Considering these limitations we recently proposed a fully automated process for the production of ⁶⁸Ga-radiopharmaceuticals based on the cyclotron irradiation of a zinc-68(⁶⁸Zn) target solution via (p,n) reaction followed by subsequent purification and labeling. 

F. Alves, V. H. Alves, A. Neves, S. J. do Carmo and A. J. Abrunhosa