Syntheses of mGluR5 PET radioligands through the radiofluorination of diaryliodonium tosylates.

3-Fluoro-1-((thiazol-4-yl)ethynyl)benzenes constitute an important class of high-affinity metabotropic glutamate subtype 5 receptor (mGluR5) ligands, some of which have been labeled with fluorine-18 (t(1/2) = 109.7 min), to provide radioligands for molecular imaging of brain mGluR5 in living animal and human subjects with positron emission tomography (PET). Labeling in the 3-fluoro position of such ligands can be achieved through aromatic nucleophilic substitution of a halide leaving group with [(18)F]fluoride ion when a weakly activating m-nitrile group is present, but is generally very low yielding (<8%). Here we used a microfluidic reaction platform to show that greatly enhanced (up to 6-fold) radiochemical yields can be achieved from suitably synthesized diaryliodonium tosylate precursors. The presence of a m-nitrile or other activating group is not required. Similar conditions were adopted in a more conventional automated radiochemistry platform having a single-pot reactor, to produce mGluR5 radioligands with useful radioactivities for PET imaging.