Labelled formaldehye for radiotracers.

A simple, efficient route to carbon-11-labelled formaldehyde, for use in positron emission tomography (PET), has been devised by scientists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. In older methods, the label was added to external portions of the molecule. In this case, the researchers have managed to attach it to the internal backbone. This means that the labelled formaldeyde can then be used to make other tracer molecules without losing the label. PET is used to monitor the movement and interaction of chemicals in the body.