Inductively coupled plasma-MS in drug development: bioanalytical aspects and applications

The vast majority of today’s modern bioanalytical methods for pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic and immunogenicity purposes are based on LC–MS/MS and immunoanalytical approaches. Indeed, these methodologies are suitable for a wide range of molecules from small to large. For a smaller but not insignificant group of compounds, LC–MS/MS is not suitable – or in some cases much less suitable – as a reliable bioanalytical methodology, and inductively coupled plasma (ICP)-MS is a more appropriate methodology. ICP-MS is one of these less widely used techniques in drug development. This methodology is predominantly used for elemental bioanalysis for pharmacokinetics, for imaging purposes, for mass-balance, food-effect and biomarker studies. In addition, in the last couple of years an increasing number of applications has been published, where ICP-MS and its various hyphenations (LC–ICP-MS, CE–ICP-MS) have been used for speciation/metabolism and proteomics studies. Here, the analytical potential, the quantitative bi...