Cisplatin, carboplatin, and oxaliplatin some of the most widely used cancer chemotherapy drugs in the Western world. Treatment efficacy is related to cellular uptake of cisplatin, and thus intracellular platinum content. Many cancers are initially responsive to platinum treatment but often
exhibit drug resistance that involves the efflux of anti-cancer drugs from cancer
cells thereby severely limiting the therapeutic outcomes.
Traditional methods to assess cisplatin uptake in cells involves digesting a cell population and measuring the total platinum content. The downfall of this approach is that it does not reflect the distribution and individual cellular variation of cisplatin uptake, nor does it provide information on the cisplatin content by cell cycle.
