A Comparative Analysis of Drug-Induced Hepatotoxicity in Clinically Relevant Situations

PLoS Comput Biol. 2017 Feb 2;13(2):e1005280. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005280. eCollection 2017 Feb.

Abstract

Drug-induced toxicity is a significant problem in clinical care. A key problem here is a general understanding of the molecular mechanisms accompanying the transition from desired drug effects to adverse events following administration of either therapeutic or toxic doses, in particular within a patient context. Here, a comparative toxicity analysis was performed for fifteen hepatotoxic drugs by evaluating toxic changes reflecting the transition from therapeutic drug responses to toxic reactions at the cellular level. By use of physiologically-based pharmacokinetic modeling, in vitro toxicity data were first contextualized to quantitatively describe time-resolved drug responses within a patient context. Comparatively studying toxic changes across the considered hepatotoxicants allowed the identification of subsets of drugs sharing similar perturbations on key cellular processes, functional classes of genes, and individual genes. The identified subsets of drugs were next analyzed with regard to drug-related characteristics and their physicochemical properties. Toxic changes were finally evaluated to predict both molecular biomarkers and potential drug-drug interactions. The results may facilitate the early diagnosis of adverse drug events in clinical application.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

  • Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury / etiology
  • Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury / metabolism*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Hepatocytes / drug effects
  • Hepatocytes / metabolism
  • Humans
  • Liver / drug effects*
  • Liver / metabolism*
  • Metabolic Clearance Rate
  • Models, Biological*
  • Pharmacokinetics*
  • Signal Transduction / drug effects*

Grants and funding

The authors acknowledge financial support by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme HeCaToS (FP7/2007-2013) under the grant agreement no. 602156. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.