ICHAC-XI, International Conference on Heteroatom Chemistry Caen (France), 14-19 June 2015 CATIONIC BORANES AS ATTRACTIVE TOOLS FOR RADIOCHEMISTRY WITH FLUORINE-18 Number (to be inserted by us) Sébastien Schmitt,1 Cécile Perrio,1* Kantapat Chansaenpak,2 François Gabbaï,2 Daniel Pla Queral,3 Béatrice Mestre-Voegtle,3 Emmanuel Gras3 1 UMR 6301 ISTCT, LDM-TEP, CNRS, CEA, Université de Caen-Basse Normandie, GIP CYCERON, Bd Henri Becquerel, BP 5229, 14074 Caen, France - perrio@cyceron.fr 2 Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, US 3 77843UPR 8241, Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination, BP 44099, 205 Route de Narbonne, 31077 Toulouse cedex 4, France Fluorine-18 (t1/2 = 110 min) is an essential short-lived radioisotope for the development of radiopharmaceuticals for positron emission tomography (PET). The most commonly used source of fluorine-18 is the [18F]fluoride anion obtained in aqueous solution. Under these conditions, [18F]fluoride is strongly hydrated and unreactive for nucleophilic substitution. The well-established procedure to increase its reactivity requires SPE and drying steps which are time-consumming, complex for automation, and not suited for miniaturization. Previous works by Gabbaï et al demonstrated the high potential of cationic boranes to achieve phase transfer of fluoride according to an anion capture-release strategy.1 We successfully adapted this strategy for the rapid conversion of aqueous [18F]fluoride to “organic” [18F]fluoride usable for radiofluorination. The overall process will be detailed and discussed. 1 As typical references : Lee, M. H.; Agou, T.; Kobayashi, J.; Kawashima, T.; Gabbaï, F. P. Chem. Commun. 2007, 1133; Hudnall T. W; Gabbaï, F. P. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 11978; Kim, Y.; Gabbaï, F. P. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009, 131, 3363.