Use of zebrafish apoptosis assays for preclinical drug discovery
- Authors
- McGrath, P., and Seng, W.L.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-130904-23
- Date
- 2013
- Source
- Expert opinion on drug discovery 8(10): 1191-202 (Review)
- Registered Authors
- McGrath, Patricia
- Keywords
- acridine orange, apoptosis, caspase, cell death, microplate, TUNEL, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Apoptosis*/drug effects
- Apoptosis*/radiation effects
- Caspases/metabolism
- Drug Discovery/methods*
- Drug Evaluation, Preclinical/methods
- Neurodegenerative Diseases/drug therapy
- Neurodegenerative Diseases/enzymology
- Neuroprotective Agents/therapeutic use
- Radiation-Protective Agents/therapeutic use
- Zebrafish*
- PubMed
- 23964640 Full text @ Expert Opin. Drug Discov.
Introduction: Apoptosis has become an important target for drug discovery. Although the mouse remains the animal model of choice for the preclinical assessment of drug toxicity and efficacy, zebrafish are increasingly used for early drug studies. Here, we describe approaches for assessing drug effects on apoptosis in transparent zebrafish.
Areas covered: In this review, the authors discuss the drug effects on developmentally regulated apoptosis using microscopy. They also discuss the effects of neuroprotectants in a chemical induced disease model using morphometric image analysis. Finally, the authors review the effects of radioprotectants in irradiated whole animals using a conventional 96-well microplate format.
Expert opinion: Several challenges have limited more widespread use of zebrafish as the organism of choice for drug screening. However, zebrafish do have a number of compelling inherent advantages including: rapid organogenesis, transparency, statistically significant numbers of animals per experiment and adaptability of cell-based methods.