The development of more potent metal-based drugs relies heavily on the understanding of their behavior in biological environments. Although the specific physicochemical properties of metal ions and their coordination compounds allow the application of element-specific techniques to track their fate after administration to a living organism, the ease of ligand exchanges makes speciation and target identification a challenge. In this review, we discuss selected examples of novel analytical metallomics methods utilizing mass spectrometric detectors often hyphenated with separation systems, and their application to anticancer metallodrug research. An emphasis is put on how these techniques help research to advance in this important scientific area with the ultimate ambition of introducing new anticancer agents into clinical development and use.

更有效的金属基药物的开发很大程度上取决于对它们在生物环境中行为的理解。尽管金属离子及其配位化合物具有特定的理化性质允许使用特定于元素的技术来追踪向生物体给药后的命运，配体交换的便捷性使物种形成和目标识别成为一个挑战。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了利用质谱检测器（经常与分离系统连接）的新型分析冶金学方法的选定实例，及其在抗癌金属药物研究中的应用。重点放在这些技术如何帮助研究在这个重要的科学领域中发展，并将其最终目标是将新的抗癌药引入临床开发和使用。