The cost of publication in Journal of Biomedical Science is borne by the National Science Council, Taiwan.

A correction for this article has been published in Journal of Biomedical Science 2009, 16:111

Review

Recent advances in biomedical applications of accelerator mass spectrometry

Sang Soo Hah

Department of Chemistry and Research Institute for Basic Sciences, Kyung Hee University 1 Hoegi-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 130-701, Korea

author email corresponding author email

Journal of Biomedical Science 2009, 16:54doi:10.1186/1423-0127-16-54

Published:	17 June 2009

Abstract

The use of radioisotopes has a long history in biomedical science, and the technique of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), an extremely sensitive nuclear physics technique for detection of very low-abundant, stable and long-lived isotopes, has now revolutionized high-sensitivity isotope detection in biomedical research, because it allows the direct determination of the amount of isotope in a sample rather than measuring its decay, and thus the quantitative analysis of the fate of the radiolabeled probes under the given conditions. Since AMS was first used in the early 90's for the analysis of biological samples containing enriched ¹⁴C for toxicology and cancer research, the biomedical applications of AMS to date range from in vitro to in vivo studies, including the studies of 1) toxicant and drug metabolism, 2) neuroscience, 3) pharmacokinetics, and 4) nutrition and metabolism of endogenous molecules such as vitamins. In addition, a new drug development concept that relies on the ultrasensitivity of AMS, known as human microdosing, is being used to obtain early human metabolism information of candidate drugs. These various aspects of AMS are reviewed and a perspective on future applications of AMS to biomedical research is provided.