MicroRNAs in Drug-induced Liver Injury

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a leading cause of acute liver failure, and a major reason for the recall of marketed drugs. Detection of potential liver injury is a challenge for clinical management and preclinical drug safety studies, as well as a great obstacle to the development of new, effective and safe drugs. Currently, serum levels of alanine and aspartate aminotransferases are the gold standard for evaluating liver injury. However, these levels are assessed by nonspecific, insensitive, and non-predictive tests, and often result in false-positive results. Therefore, there is an urgent need for better DILI biomarkers to guide risk assessment and patient management. The discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs) as a new class of gene expression regulators has triggered an explosion of research, particularly on the measurement of miRNAs in various body fluids as biomarkers for many human diseases. The properties of miRNA-based biomarkers, such as tissue specificity and high stability and sensitivity, suggest they could be used as novel, minimally invasive and stable DILI biomarkers. In the current review, we summarize recent progress concerning the role of miRNAs in diagnosing and monitoring both clinical and preclinical DILI, and discuss the main advantages and challenges of miRNAs as novel DILI biomarkers.