{"entity":{"id":"choline-c11","kind":"drug","name":"Choline C-11","aka":["[11C]choline"],"tldr":"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.","status":"established","asOf":"2026-09-08","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline_C-11","links":[{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline_C-11"},{"label":"Label (DailyMed)","url":"https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/search.cfm?labeltype=all&query=choline%20c%2011"}],"tags":["gap-fill","chembl-universe"],"related":[],"cancers":["prostate"],"sections":[],"technologies":["pet","psma-pet"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"notes":[],"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":[{"region":"US","year":2012,"indication":"PET imaging of suspected prostate cancer recurrence with non-informative conventional imaging"}],"mechanismSteps":[],"toxicity":[],"access":[],"regulatoryEvents":[]},"route":"/drugs/choline-c11/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"prostate","kind":"cancer","name":"Prostate cancer","route":"/cancers/prostate/"}],"technology":[{"id":"pet","kind":"technology","name":"PET (positron emission tomography)","route":"/technologies/pet/"},{"id":"psma-pet","kind":"technology","name":"PSMA PET","route":"/technologies/psma-pet/"}]}}