177Lu is one of the most widely used therapeutic radionuclides in nuclear medicine. The most promising procedure for its production is isolation from neutron-irradiated ytterbium targets enriched in 176Yb. Today, 177Lu is produced in the world at ten reactors, whereas the demand for this radionuclide steadily increases. In this study, a procedure was developed for producing 177Lu at the IRT-T research reactor (Tomsk, Russia) using ion-exchange chromatography with the column heating and elution with an α-HIBA solution with gradient рН. Conditions were found for producing a no-carrier-added 177Lu solution from ytterbium of natural isotope composition. The procedure was tested with an enriched ytterbium target. The 177Lu solutions obtained meets the requirements of the Russian Federation Pharmacopoeia. The process developed will be used for producing 177Lu at the IRT-T reactor for use in nuclear therapy.
Ushakov et al. (Wed,) studied this question.