18F-Fluorination: Challenge and Opportunity for Organic Chemists

F-18-fluorination is an important and growing field in organic synthesis that has attracted many chemists in the recent past. Here we present our own, biased perspective with a focus on our own chemistry that evaluates recent advances in the field and provides our opinion on the challenges for the development of new chemistry, so that it may have an impact on imaging. We hope that the manuscript will provide a useful guide to chemists to develop reliable and robust reaction chemistry suitable for radiofluorination to have a real impact on human health.

Automated summary

F-18-fluorination is an important and rapidly growing field in organic synthesis that has attracted significant attention from chemists. This manuscript presents a biased perspective on recent advances in the field, with a focus on the author's own chemistry, and discusses challenges for the development of new chemistry with potential impact on imaging. The aim is to provide a useful guide for chemists to develop reliable reaction chemistry suitable for radiofluorination to make a real impact on human health.