Radiocyanation is an attractive approach to introduce carbon-11 into radiopharmaceuticals, as nitriles and other acyl moieties. This report describes a Friedel-Crafts-type electrophilic radiocyanation of (hetero)aryltrimethylgermanes and trimethylstannanes as well as a direct C-H radiocyanation of (hetero)arenes. This approach leverages the in situ oxidation of 11CCN- to 11CCNCl to enable electrophilic aromatic substitution pathways for accessing relevant 11C-aryl nitrile scaffolds. This method proceeds in short reaction times with readily available, shelf-stable reagents and enables radiocyanation of diverse substrates in good radiochemical yields.
McCarthy et al. (Mon,) studied this question.