A versatile approach for assaying in vitro metallodrug metabolism using CE hyphenated with ICP-MS

Abstract

An informative analytical method, based on commercially available capillary electrophoresis (CE), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and interface units, was developed for ascertaining possible metabolic transformations of metal-based drugs. Using a novel anticancer gallium compound, it was demonstrated that the drug remains intact in the simulated intestine juice. On the contrary, it undergoes a marked change in speciation (mostly, due to binding to transferrin) in human serum.