Mass spectrometry imaging of therapeutics from animal models to three-dimensional cell cultures.

Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) is a powerful label-free technique for the investigation of the spatial distribution of molecules at complex surfaces and has been widely used in the pharmaceutical sciences to understand the distribution of different drugs and their metabolites in various biological samples, ranging from cell-based models to tissues. Here, we review the current applications of MSI for drug studies in animal models, followed by a discussion of the novel advances of MSI in three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures for accurate, efficient, and high-throughput analyses to evaluate therapeutics.