My role as an academic research scientist is to devise innovative approaches and develop study plans that can support the Consortium in delivering the research aims within the constraints of time and budget. Specifically I work with the WP2 (Liver Injury) team to plan and coordinate patient recruitment, sample collection, explore immunological biomarkers and facilitate analysis of biomarker datasets.

Transbioline brings together the global experts in drug-related organ injury and safety biomarkers from academia, well-established pharma and emerging biotech companies to tackle an unpredictable, life-threatening medical condition. Since cases are rare and varied, only by such an International collaboration can progress be made.

The challenge of setting up and coordinating activities across 14 recruiting centres in UK has only been possible with support of experienced, dedicated team in Nottingham. Further alignment of activities in European centres, where regulations, expectations and culture differ, to ensure consistency of sampling and data collection has been both challenging and interesting giving an insight into alternative approaches and new considerations. The global COVID pandemic restrictions also meant we had to reorganise and adapt our workplan.

Successful development of an aligned protocol and database that works for all the clinical centres and medical care/practices in 7 different Countries (using expert advice from the WP2 clinicians and with a lot of help from Camilla in Malaga). This has also been made available for future collaborative projects through links with the EASL DHILI Consortium and Pro-Euro DILI Network, ensuring samples can be used for further collaborative research.

For drug-induced liver injury, our demonstrated capability to recruit and sample a large highly-characterised cohort with robust diagnosis of acute DILI and controls will provide a high-quality resource enabling testing and identification of novel biomarkers that have potential for improving patient care. The biomarkers could provide sought-after aid for diagnosis and monitoring of adverse drug reactions.

Face to Face General assembly meetings – a chance to get to know people and establish dialogue to explain perspectives and constraints, resolve issues and understand their strengths and see new cities. This has has been realy valuable to build a professional network and work collaboratively to achieve the best outputs. The involvement and interactions with the patient representatives meant we keep patients central in our activities.