Imaging and spatially resolved quantification of drug distribution in tissues by mass spectrometry

• Published in: Current opinion in chemical biology Vol. 44; pp. 93 - 100
• Main Authors: Prideaux, Brendan, Lenaerts, Anne, Dartois, Véronique
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2018
• Subjects: Animals; Chromatography, Liquid - instrumentation; Chromatography, Liquid - methods; Drug Discovery - instrumentation; Drug Discovery - methods; Equipment Design; Humans; Mass Spectrometry - instrumentation; Mass Spectrometry - methods; Pharmaceutical Preparations - analysis; Pharmaceutical Preparations - metabolism; Tissue Distribution
• ISSN: 1367-5931; 1879-0402
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2018.05.007

•An overview of recent advances in MSI for drug localization is presented.•MSI provides label-free imaging of drugs and metabolites at high lateral resolution.•Spatial-profiling of drugs enables rapid drug localization with limited spatial detail.•Direct quantification of drugs in tissues by MSI is challenging.•LCM-LC/MS/MS enables absolute quantification of drugs within defined tissue regions. Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) is a powerful label-free technique for visualizing drug and metabolite distributions in biological tissues. In this review, we discuss recent developments in MSI and spatial profiling technologies to visualize and quantify drug distributions in tissues. We also present recent examples of applications of these technologies for assessing drug distribution within tissues and individual cells. Finally, we focus on an emerging technique coupling laser capture microdissection (LCM) to quantitative mass spectrometry, which combines the respective advantages of imaging and conventional liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, and thus enables spatially resolved drug quantification.