Monitoring the kinetic changes of drugs and metabolites plays a crucial role in fundamental research, preclinical and clinical application. Raman spectroscopy (RS) is regarded as a fingerprinting technique that can reflect molecular structures but limited in applications due to poor sensitivity. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) significantly amplifies the detection sensitivity by plasmonic substrates, facilitating the identification and quantification of small molecules in biological samples, such as serum, urine, and living cells. This review will focus on advances in how SERS has been utilized to monitor the dynamic processes of small molecule drugs and metabolites in recent years. We first provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the mechanism and practical considerations of SERS, including enhancement theory, substrate design, sample pretreatment, molecule–substrate interactions and spectral analysis. Then we describe the latest advances in SERS for the detection and analysis of metabolites and drugs in cells, dynamic monitoring of drug in various biological matrices, and metabolic profiling for health assessment in biological fluids. We believe that high-performance SERS substrates, standardized technical regulations, and artificial intelligence spectral analysis will boost sensitive, accurate, reproducible, and universal molecular detection in the future. We hoped this review could inspire researchers working in related fields to better understand and utilize SERS for the analytical detection of drugs and metabolites.

中文翻译：

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监测药物和代谢物的动力学过程：表面增强拉曼光谱


监测药物和代谢物的动力学变化在基础研究、临床前和临床应用中起着至关重要的作用。拉曼光谱 （RS） 被认为是一种可以反映分子结构的指纹图谱技术，但由于灵敏度差，其应用受到限制。表面增强拉曼光谱 （SERS） 显著提高了等离子体底物的检测灵敏度，有助于识别和定量生物样品中的小分子，如血清、尿液和活细胞。本文将重点介绍近年来如何利用 SERS 监测小分子药物和代谢物的动态过程的进展。我们首先为读者全面概述了 SERS 的机制和实际考虑，包括增强理论、底物设计、样品预处理、分子-底物相互作用和光谱分析。然后，我们描述了 SERS 在细胞中代谢物和药物检测和分析、各种生物基质中药物的动态监测以及用于生物体液健康评估的代谢分析方面的最新进展。我们相信，高性能的 SERS 底物、标准化的技术法规和人工智能光谱分析将在未来推动灵敏、准确、可重现和通用的分子检测。我们希望本综述可以激励相关领域的研究人员更好地了解和利用 SERS 进行药物和代谢物的分析检测。