Qualified biomarkers help to optimize drug development and patient safety, yet for the regulatory acceptance of safety biomarkers substantial sample sizes are needed to ensure adequate case and control numbers, and robust evidence sufficient for qualification. To address this challenge, a consortium of leading European research institutions and SMEs has been established. The consortium will generate exploratory and confirmatory data enabling regulatory qualification of new safety biomarkers for application in drug development; establish robust datasets on the DILI, DIKI, DIPI, DIVI and DINI biomarkers to enhance diagnosis of disease; develop and validate assays for new safety biomarkers; implement profiles of circulating miRNAs as tissue and mechanism specific diagnostic tool; have key safety biomarkers accepted as qualified drug development tools by EMA, FDA, and PMDA.

Given the significant expertise available across the consortium, the group will be able to tackle the key challenges related to successful biomarker qualification. A key driving principle of the consortium is cross-linking via existing networks of top profile research institutions, as well as capitalizing on existing data and resources. The Consortium is embedded into a network of international research collaborations such as the Pro-Euro-DILI-registry, TransQST, eTRANSAFE, the i2b2 tranSMART Foundation, the CIOMS DILI working group, EPoS, LITMUS, and BBMRI. To optimize regulatory interaction, we intend to continue our successful collaboration with non-European consortia such as PSTC, the FNIH Biomarkers Consortium, and US DILIN. A key expected result of the consortium will be a “Safety Biomarker Factory”, regularly qualifying new markers, with an associated “Safety Biomarker Warehouse”, providing to the scientific community, industry, and patients detailed data and information, and knowledge across a large spectrum of advanced safety biomarkers.

Website of the Project