摘要

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) with the merits of high sensitivity and accuracy, strong tolerance to interference and multi-element simultaneous detection ability has shown its great potentials in the quantification of biomolecules with elemental labeling strategies in the past decade. Exogenous elemental tags play essential roles on the performance of ICP-MS based analytical strategies for biomolecules. In this review, the state of the art of ICP-MS based analytical techniques with exogenous tags for the quantification of biomolecules is provided. The basics of exogenous tags, such as the labeling strategies and classification of tags, are summarized, and the applications of ICP-MS based analytical techniques with elemental tags for the quantification of biomolecules (including proteins and nucleic acids) and cell analysis are discussed in detail. Finally, several prospects for the further development of this area are proposed.