Analytical and Omics-Based Advances in the Study of Drug-Induced Liver Injury

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a significant clinical issue, affecting 1–1.5 million patients annually, and remains a major challenge during drug development—toxicity and safety concerns are the second-highest reason for drug candidate failure. The future prevalence of DILI can be minimized by developing a greater understanding of the biological mechanisms behind DILI. Both qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques are vital to characterizing and investigating DILI. In vitro assays are capable of characterizing specific aspects of a drug’s hepatotoxic nature and multiplexed assays are capable of characterizing and scoring a drug’s association with DILI. However, an even deeper insight into the perturbations to biological pathways involved in the mechanisms of DILI can be gained through the use of omics-based analytical techniques: genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. These omics analytical techniques can offer qualitative and quantitative insight into genetic susceptibilities to DILI, the impact of drug treatment on gene expression, and the effect on protein and metabolite abundance. This review will discuss the analytical techniques that can be applied to characterize and investigate the biological mechanisms of DILI and potential predictive biomarkers.