Abstract: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common critical illness. Lacking sensitive and early detection indicators of diagnosing AKI at an early stage results in a high mortality rate. If timely and effective interventions are not adopted, kidney insults may aggravate and lead to kidney failure and even death. Some new biomarkers are urgently needed for improving the prevention, diagnosis and prognosis of AKI. The current literature on promising markers of AKI demonstrates that kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1), interleukin-18 (IL-8), neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), human liver-type fatty acid-binding protein (L-FABP), insulin-like growth factor binding protein-7 (IGFBP-7), tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases (TIMP-2), N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidase (NAG) and galectin-3 (Gal-3) are closely associated with the damaging mechanism of AKI. And AKI may be quickly identified before any detectable change of blood creatinine.