Abstract

Drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry has shown great demands for screening absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion (ADME) and pharmacokinetics (PK) in guiding the selection of lead candidate compounds. Determination of ADME/PK properties of new chemical entities (NCE) in early drug discovery should allow defects to be corrected prior to time-consuming and expensive preclinical and clinical development stages. Mass spectrometry has evolved to become an irreplaceable technology in all types of drug discovery applications because of its high sensitivity, speed, selectivity, versatility, and ease of automation. This review will include current mass spectrometric techniques and applications in drug discovery, as well as future prospects.

Keywords: mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography, quantitation, qualitation, drugs, metabolites, adme/pk