A new column-based purification system and approach are described for rapid separation and purification of the alpha-emitting therapeutic radioisotope .sup.211At from dissolved cyclotron targets that provide highly reproducible product results with excellent .sup.211At species distributions and high antibody labeling yields compared with prior art manual extraction results of the prior art that can be expected to enable enhanced production of purified .sup.211At isotope products suitable for therapeutic medical applications such as treatment of cancer in human patients.