Is the ⁶⁷Cu production worldwide feasible for expanding preclinical and clinical studies? How can we face the ingrowing demands of this emerging and promising theranostic radionuclide for personalized therapies? This review looks at the different production routes, including the accelerator- and reactor-based ones, providing a comprehensive overview of the actual ⁶⁷Cu supply, with brief insight into its use in non-clinical and clinical studies. In addition to the most often explored nuclear reactions, this work focuses on the ⁶⁷Cu separation and purification techniques, as well as the target material recovery procedures that are mandatory for the economic sustainability of the production cycle. The quality aspects, such as radiochemical, chemical, and radionuclidic purity, with particular attention to the coproduction of the counterpart ⁶⁴Cu, are also taken into account, with detailed comparisons among the different production routes. Future possibilities related to new infrastructures are included in this work, as well as new developments on the radiopharmaceuticals aspects.

The method of separation of macroscopic amounts of ytterbium from mixture containing micro quantities of 177Lu produced via 176Yb(n,γ)177Yb →177Lu was studied. For this purpose an electrolytic reduction and amalgamation of ytterbium from Lu-metricconverterProductID177 in177 in citrate electrolyte was applied. The effect of such parameters as: pH, applied potential and time of the electrochemical process, number of cycles of the electrolysis and amalgamations performed under the same conditions using fresh electrodes were examined.