Synthesis of l -[4- 11 C]Asparagine by Ring-Opening Nucleophilic 11 C-Cyanation Reaction of a Chiral Cyclic Sulfamidate Precursor
The development of a convenient and rapid method to synthesize radiolabeled enantiomerically pure amino acids (AAs) as potential positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agents for mapping various biochemical transformations in living organisms remains as a challenge. This is especially true for the synthesis of carbon-11 labeled AAs given the short half-life of carbon-11 ( 11 C, t 1/2 = 20.4 min). A facile synthetic pathway to prepare enantiomerically pure 11C-labeled L-asparagine was developed using a partially protected serine as a starting material with a four-step transformation providing a chiral fivemembered cyclic sulfamidate as the radiolabeling precursor. Its structure and absolute configuration were confirmed by X-Ray crystallography. Utilizing a [ 11 C]cyanide nucleophilic ring opening reaction followed by selective acidic hydrolysis and deprotection, enantiomerically pure L-[4- 11 C]asparagine was synthesized. Further optimization of reaction parameters, including base, metal ion source, solvent, acid component, reaction temperature and reaction time, a reliable two-step method for synthesizing L-[4- 11 C]asparagine was presented; within a 45 ± 3 min (n = 5, from end-of-bombardment), the desired enantiomerically pure product was synthesized with the initial nucleophilic cyanation yield of 69 ± 4% (n = 5) and overall two-step radiochemical yield of 53 ± 2% (n = 5) based on starting [ 11 C]HCN, and with radiochemical purity of 96 ± 2% (n = 5).