Progress in liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry instrumentation and its impact on high-throughput screening

In the past 10 years, liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) has rapidly matured to become a very powerful and useful analytical tool that is widely applied in many areas of chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences and biochemistry. In this paper, recent instrumental developments in LC–MS-related interfacing, ionization and mass analysis are reviewed from the perspective of the application of LC–MS in high-throughput screening of combinatorial libraries and the related high-throughput quantitative bioanalysis in early drug-discovery studies, such as early adsorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion studies.