The 3D OrbiSIMS could measure drug uptake and effect in single cells and corresponding metabolic changes. It could help identify where drugs go at the cellular level to help answer long-standing questions about whether drug concentrations are sufficiently high in the right places to have a therapeutic effect, or if the medicine is lodging within cellular components and causing toxicity. If anomalies were spotted earlier it might help to explain toxicities or lack of efficacy of a medicine and reduce costly late-stage failures.
International standards are an important route to impact and we have an established track record that we will build by leading several VAMAS interlaboratory studies, to deliver the standards needed to ease the adoption of the 3d OrbiSIMS around the world.