Recent advances in biomedical applications of accelerator massspectrometry

摘要

The use of radioisotopes has a long history in biomedical science, and the technique of acceleratormass spectrometry (AMS), an extremely sensitive nuclear physics technique for detection of verylow-abundant, stable and long-lived isotopes, has now revolutionized high-sensitivity isotopedetection in biomedical research, because it allows the direct determination of the amount ofisotope in a sample rather than measuring its decay, and thus the quantitative analysis of the fate ofthe radiolabeled probes under the given conditions. Since AMS was first used in the early 90's forthe analysis of biological samples containing enriched 14C for toxicology and cancer research, thebiomedical applications of AMS to date range from in vitro to in vivo studies, including the studies of1) toxicant and drug metabolism, 2) neuroscience, 3) pharmacokinetics, and 4) nutrition andmetabolism of endogenous molecules such as vitamins. In addition, a new drug developmentconcept that relies on the ultrasensitivity of AMS, known as human microdosing, is being used toobtain early human metabolism information of candidate drugs. These various aspects of AMS arereviewed and a perspective on future applications of AMS to biomedical research is provided.