Scalable Terbium-149 Production from Highly Enriched Gadolinium-150 Targets
Abstract
We propose a two-stage production method to overcome existing supply-constraints for the alpha-emitter 149gTb, a promising candidate for Targeted Alpha Therapy (TAT) with no existing globally scalable production pathway. Although awaiting experimental measurement of the 150Gd(p,2n)149gTb cross section, the proposed method could produce 149gTb at clinical scale and beyond on readily available proton cyclotrons, enabled by production of the extinct but long-lived isotope 150Gd, a pure alpha emitter with a 1.79 million year half-life. Stage one generates 150Gd feedstock by irradiating natural Eu or enriched 151Eu with ≳10 MeV protons, neutrons or photons. Stage two produces 149gTb from fabricated 150Gd targets by driving the 150Gd(p,2n)149gTb reaction with ≳14 MeV protons, accessible on over 700 reported cyclotrons worldwide. Fast fusion neutrons appear to offer the most scalable pathway for 150Gd production: even with a large 149 gTb dose size of 1 GBq and 40 million administered doses/yr, we estimate this would require neutrons produced by only 6.8 megawatts of steady-state deuterium-tritium power to produce the required 150Gd, far below expected capacity in the next decade. The route described here, if validated, would enable 149gTb supply at the scale needed to support clinical development of 149gTb-based TAT.
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BibTeX
@misc{parisi2026scalable,
title = {{Scalable Terbium-149 Production from Highly Enriched Gadolinium-150 Targets}},
author = {J. F. Parisi and A. Rutkowski},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.25554},
eprint = {2609.25554},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25554},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Scalable Terbium-149 Production from Highly Enriched Gadolinium-150 Targets
AU - J. F. Parisi
AU - A. Rutkowski
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.25554
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25554
AB - We propose a two-stage production method to overcome existing supply-constraints for the alpha-emitter ^149gTb, a promising candidate for Targeted Alpha Therapy (TAT) with no existing globally scalable production pathway. Although awaiting experimental measurement of the ^150Gd(p,2n)^149gTb cross section, the proposed method could produce ^149gTb at clinical scale and beyond on readily available proton cyclotrons, enabled by production of the extinct but long-lived isotope ^150Gd, a pure alpha emitter with a 1.79 million year half-life. Stage one generates ^150Gd feedstock by irradiating natural Eu or enriched ^151Eu with ≳10 MeV protons, neutrons or photons. Stage two produces ^149gTb from fabricated ^150Gd targets by driving the ^150Gd(p,2n)^149gTb reaction with ≳14 MeV protons, accessible on over 700 reported cyclotrons worldwide. Fast fusion neutrons appear to offer the most scalable pathway for ^150Gd production: even with a large ^149 gTb dose size of 1 GBq and 40 million administered doses/yr, we estimate this would require neutrons produced by only 6.8 megawatts of steady-state deuterium-tritium power to produce the required ^150Gd, far below expected capacity in the next decade. The route described here, if validated, would enable ^149gTb supply at the scale needed to support clinical development of ^149gTb-based TAT.
ER -