What is next for dried blood spots?

In the last several years, dried blood spot (DBS) sampling has re-emerged and attracted a great interest in the pharmaceutical industry as a microsampling technology for drug discovery and development studies. Although significant progress has been made to understand strengths and weaknesses of the technique, many organizations are still at the evaluation stage and experimental observations have resulted in more questions being raised as to whether there is a real future for this technology in pharmaceutical research, especially in support of pharmacokinetic studies. This article summarizes recently gained knowledge against the originally projected advantages of this technique, discusses some practical challenges that need to be overcome before DBS can be widely applied in drug development studies, and highlights some specific study types where DBS can be applied with a good benefit:risk ratio. The authors hope this article can stimulate further discussions about what are the next steps for DBS.