# Choline C-11

Source: https://onco.cc/drugs/choline-c11/  
OnCo record `choline-c11` (Treatment). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Choline C-11 was the first PET tracer approved in the United States, in 2012, to find where prostate cancer has come back when PSA rises after treatment; PSMA tracers have now largely replaced it.

## Summary

The FDA approved Choline C 11 Injection in September 2012, produced at the Mayo Clinic, for PET imaging of patients with suspected prostate cancer recurrence and non-informative bone scan, CT or MRI, the first approval of a PET agent for prostate cancer. Its 20-minute half-life means it must be made on site with a cyclotron, which confined it to a few centres. From 2020 the PSMA-targeted tracers gallium-68 PSMA-11 and piflufolastat F-18, with higher sensitivity at low PSA and longer half-lives, took over most recurrence imaging, and fluciclovine F-18 offered a distributable amino-acid alternative.

## Fields

- Kind: Treatment
- Status: established
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Also known as: [11C]choline
- Tags: gap-fill; chembl-universe
- Brand: Choline C 11 Injection
- Modality: PET radiotracer, intravenous
- Mechanism: Carbon-11-labelled choline is taken up by cells with high phosphatidylcholine synthesis, including prostate cancer, and imaged by PET within minutes because of the isotope's 20-minute half-life.
- Approvals: US 2012: PET imaging of suspected prostate cancer recurrence with non-informative conventional imaging

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline_C-11
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline_C-11
- Label (DailyMed): https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/search.cfm?labeltype=all&query=choline%20c%2011

## Connected records

- cancers: [Prostate cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/prostate/)
- technologies: [PET (positron emission tomography)](https://onco.cc/technologies/pet/), [PSMA PET](https://onco.cc/technologies/psma-pet/)

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