New techniques in the pharmacokinetic analysis of cancer drugs. I. Mass spectrometry: recent technical developments and applications in cancer chemotherapy.

Mass spectrometry has emerged as a powerful tool for studying the fate of drugs in living organisms, especially when used in conjunction with new techniques of ionization, such as fast atom bombardment or the ion spray technique, and efficient detectors. New ionization techniques have led to the development of high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry interfaces that combine the separation efficiency of HPLC and the power of mass spectrometry for determination of the molecular weight of complex macromolecules and identification of the structure of drugs and their biotransformation products.