Perspective on in vivo SPME for human applications: starting from monitoring doxorubicin during lung chemo-perfusion

In vivo solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is a non-destructive and minimally invasive sampling technique for living systems that facilitates the acquisition of representative metabolome profiles while offering detection of low abundance, short-lived, and unstable species that not easily captured by traditional methods. Recently, following over 10 years of adventure in ex vivo and in vivo animal studies, SPME was successfully applied for in vivo analysis of human tissue. The proposed in vivo SPME method was coupled to LC-MS for monitoring of doxorubicin during in vivo lung perfusion (IVLP) with temporal and spatial information. In view of this breakthrough and considering the already comprehensive body of research on animal models in the literature, we provide here future perspectives on in vivo SPME from three different aspects: optimization and development of SPME features, direct coupling with MS for real-time monitoring, and future applications.