Cancer is a leading cause of death and a severe impediment to increasing life expectancy.According to Global Cancer Statistics 2020,there are an estimation of 19.3 million new cancer cases and 10 million cancer deaths worldwide in 2020.Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial to reducing cancer mortality.Tumor markers are the metabolic and immune molecules produced by tumor cells or tumor-related normal tissues.The concentration of tumor marker will change abnormally with the tumor occurrence,metastasis and treatment.Tumor marker detection is of great significance for cancer's early diagnosis,progress monitoring,and prognosis.Carcinoembryonic antigen(CEA) is a broad-spectrum tumor marker related to colorectal cancer,pancreatic cancer,liver cancer,lung cancer,breast cancer and ovarian cancer.Prostate-specific antigen(PSA) monitoring in serum effectively diagnoses whether prostate cancer has recurred after surgery.Ultrasonography combined with alpha-fetoprotein(AFP) detection could effectively screen and diagnose hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) for high-risk patients.But most importantly,inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry(ICP-MS) is an analytical method with high resolution,high sensitivity,wide dynamic range(9 orders of magnitude) and multi-element simultaneous detection.In the past two decades,ICP-MS methods based on stable isotope labels have been widely used to detect metal ions,nucleic acids,peptides,proteins,enzymes,small molecules and single cells.Currently,ICP-MS methods for tumor markers detection have also been widely reported.In this review,according to distinct interactions,ICP-MS methods are divided into two types:immunoassay methods and nucleic acid-based methods.The construction and application of each are discussed in the subsequent section.In the third part,common tumor markers and related cancer types are summarized in a table.CEA,PSA,AFP,and their ICP-MS detection methods are described in detail,along with the separation method of excess tags and the signal amplification mechanism of nanoparticle tags are discussed.Besides,only one tumor marker detection may get a false-positive result.Multiple detection could effectively reduce the false positive rate and improve the specificity of diagnosis.This approach's advantage lies in reducing sample consumption,shortening experiment time,and improving diagnostic accuracy.Thus,multiple detection has attracted widespread attention.Combined with laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry(LA-ICP-MS) and flow cytometry mass spectrometry,it is possible to simultaneously determine multiple proteins on a single microarray spot,cell,and cancer tissue.Multiple biomarkers detection based on ICP-MS is briefly described,and the challenge of constructing multiple detection methods is also discussed in this review.Finally,limitations of ICP-MS detection methods based on element labeling are discussed.Anticipated developments in ICP-MS detection are proposed,including:①Development of new strategies,②Combination with other technologies such as big data analysis,③Transformation of laboratory research results into clinical application technologies.