Monitoring kinetic processes of drugs and metabolites: Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Zhewen Luo; Haoran Chen; Xinyuan Bi; Jian Ye

doi:10.1016/j.addr.2024.115483

Monitoring kinetic processes of drugs and metabolites: Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Adv Drug Deliv Rev. 2024 Dec 13:217:115483. doi: 10.1016/j.addr.2024.115483. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Zhewen Luo¹, Haoran Chen¹, Xinyuan Bi¹, Jian Ye²

Affiliations

¹ Sixth People's Hospital, School of Medicine & School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, PR China.
² Sixth People's Hospital, School of Medicine & School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, PR China; Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China; Shanghai Key Laboratory of Gynecologic Oncology, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200127, PR China; Shanghai Jiao Tong University Sichuan Research Institute, Chengdu 610213, PR China. Electronic address: yejian78@sjtu.edu.cn.

PMID: 39675433
DOI: 10.1016/j.addr.2024.115483

Abstract

Monitoring the kinetic changes of drugs and metabolites plays a crucial role in fundamental research, preclinical and clinical application. Raman spectroscopy (RS) is regarded as a fingerprinting technique that can reflect molecular structures but limited in applications due to poor sensitivity. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) significantly amplifies the detection sensitivity by plasmonic substrates, facilitating the identification and quantification of small molecules in biological samples, such as serum, urine, and living cells. This review will focus on advances in how SERS has been utilized to monitor the dynamic processes of small molecule drugs and metabolites in recent years. We first provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the mechanism and practical considerations of SERS, including enhancement theory, substrate design, sample pretreatment, molecule-substrate interactions and spectral analysis. Then we describe the latest advances in SERS for the detection and analysis of metabolites and drugs in cells, dynamic monitoring of drug in various biological matrices, and metabolic profiling for health assessment in biological fluids. We believe that high-performance SERS substrates, standardized technical regulations, and artificial intelligence spectral analysis will boost sensitive, accurate, reproducible, and universal molecular detection in the future. We hoped this review could inspire researchers working in related fields to better understand and utilize SERS for the analytical detection of drugs and metabolites.

Keywords: Metabolites detection; Pharmacokinetics; Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Publication types

Review