Application of ICP-MS to the development of metal-based drugs and diagnostic agents: where do we stand?

Metallodrug development presents one of the ‘killer’ applications to sustain further progress of ICP-MS which even with its hyphenated, metallomics-directed configurations has long since attained the status of a mature analytical technique. The incremental advance of ICP-MS in the field is codified and critically assessed in this review. Providing thus an update of a previous review article by the author (see A. R. Timerbaev, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2014, 29, 1058–1072), it covers the topics of monitoring the drug–biomolecule interactions, studying cellular and tissue distribution, probing the intracellular transformation and profiling active metabolites, all of which benefit from the sensitive and precise determination of drug-comprising metals. Special emphasis is placed on ICP-MS-based methodologies that offer new insights into drug activation and targeting chemistries. Also addressed are demanding issues of ascertaining the cellular response to a drug and performing tissue imaging in a high-resolution and quantitative way.