Aromatic ring tritiation and tritium decay catastrophe

During her development of the radioimmunoassay (RIA) in the late 1950's, Rosalyn Yalow also discovered a curious property involving the ¹²⁵I peptides used in her work. She found that many ¹²⁵I peptides suffered irrevocable damage as they individually decayed. As a result of their altered structures, these non-radioactive fragmented peptides could no longer bind to the biological target and interfere with the non-decayed ¹²⁵I peptide binding. This useful outcome acted to preserve the potency and molar activity of the remaining ¹²⁵I peptides. Yalow termed this phenomenon "decay catastrophe." Recently, the first documented instance of tritium decay catastrophe for a fully tritiated methyl group (-C³H₃) was reported. In this current work, an example is provided which also extends tritium decay catastrophe to a high molar activity radioligand labelled with tritium in several aromatic ring positions.