Garrett Abel
Research Mentor: Eric Webb
Mentor Department: Radiology, Medicine
Author(s): Garrett Abel , Mohamed Matar, E. William Webb
Session: Session 1 (9:00 AM – 9:50 AM)
Presentation Type: Poster 7
Abstract
Radiotracers serve many functions in drug development and in medical imaging, most notably diagnosis and staging cancer with 18F-FDG (Org. Lett. 2025, 27, 1724–1728). However, current methods for synthesis of the necessary precursors required for radiotracer synthesis are difficult, inefficient, and require conditions incompatible with the late stage molecules targeted for radiotracer development. Sulfonium salts require multistep protocoles (J. Med. Chem. 2021, 64, 9321–9329) while (hetero)aryl pinacol boronates are notably unstable (Org. Lett. 2025, 27, 6545–6550). Herein, we detail metal-mediated approaches that facilitate the synthesis of existing and novel precursors for radiochemical labeling via radiofluorination of sulfonium salts and copper-mediated radiofluorination. For example, we show that a palladium mediated installation of methoxyl groups is more applicable than previously precedented copper chemistry to furnish electron rich sulfonium salts (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 3998–4001; Chem. – Eur. J. 2016, 22, 15674-15683). Similarly, complex heteroaryl pinacol boronate species can be synthesized readily and used to explore difficult radiochemistry. Overall our research reinforces the need for further exploration into metal-mediated synthesis of radiochemical precursors.
