Abstract
MALDI imaging is a highly powerful technology to map molecules in tissue without any labelling.We present here the detection of anticancer agents in mussels by MALDI and MALDI 2 technologies. Drugs were detected, although the mass range of the molecules is below 1000 Da. This was very challenging due to the presence in conventional MALDI of the matrix peaks. The use in this work of the TIMS TOF flex technology MALDI 2 is of high interest to eliminate all the chemical background and can be complementary to more conventional MALDI instruments (Ultraflextreme, for example).
A wide list of anticancer drugs was tentatively detected. However, the quantitation was not possible, neither on the MALDI nor on the Exploris 120.
We therefore concluded that drug quantity is very low for all anticancer molecules, and this is true in all the marine stations chosen for the study and also in the different calendar periods.
This study shows that surveillance of this pollution is possible and necessary.