Drug induced liver injury network DILIN

We call attention also to the web site for the Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN) sponsored since 2003 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Liver Disease Branch of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). 

Fontana RJ, Watkins PB, Bonkovsky HL, et al. Drug-induced liver injury network (DILIN) prospective study Rationale, design and conduct. Drug Saf. 2009 32(l) 55-68. 

A variety of biomarkers have been shown to be valuable individually for one or several toxicant or disease situations. Few of these biomarkers have been systematically evaluated for the plethora of situations that might provoke false positive responses. Acceleration of the current pace of biomarker evaluation and qualification demands (a) the availability of panels of biomarker-assays that can be comparatively evaluated on well-defined common sample sets, (b) fit-for-purpose performance evaluation in controlled animal studies with carefully benchmarked histological endpoints and samples from well-defined focused clinical trial cohorts, and (c) ready availability of banked blood and urine sample archives from clinical trial populations with carefully documented morbidities such as the Framingham Heart Study,45 or the Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN) prospective study,46 to name a few. Availability of such panels of validated biomarker assays and well-documented preclinical and clinical samples, as well as increased cooperation between animal model researchers and clinical researchers will enable individual biomarkers to be qualified for sensitivity of specifically defined adverse events, qualified for appropriate specificity using samples of defined benign events, and collected into panels that yield complementary information about the health and safety of animals and patients. 

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