PUBLICATION
Shifting the focus of zebrafish toward a model of the tumor microenvironment
- Authors
- Weiss, J.M., Lumaquin-Yin, D., Montal, E., Suresh, S., Leonhardt, C.S., White, R.M.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-221221-5
- Date
- 2022
- Source
- eLIFE 11: (Other)
- Registered Authors
- White, Richard M.
- Keywords
- cancer, cancer biology, microenvironment, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Ecosystem
- Models, Biological
- Neoplasms*/genetics
- Neoplasms*/pathology
- Tumor Microenvironment
- Zebrafish*
- PubMed
- 36538362 Full text @ Elife
Citation
Weiss, J.M., Lumaquin-Yin, D., Montal, E., Suresh, S., Leonhardt, C.S., White, R.M. (2022) Shifting the focus of zebrafish toward a model of the tumor microenvironment. eLIFE. 11:.
Abstract
Cancer cells exist in a complex ecosystem with numerous other cell types in the tumor microenvironment (TME). The composition of this tumor/TME ecosystem will vary at each anatomic site and affects phenotypes such as initiation, metastasis, and drug resistance. A mechanistic understanding of the large number of cell-cell interactions between tumor and TME requires models that allow us to both characterize as well as genetically perturb this complexity. Zebrafish are a model system optimized for this problem, because of the large number of existing cell-type-specific drivers that can label nearly any cell in the TME. These include stromal cells, immune cells, and tissue resident normal cells. These cell-type-specific promoters/enhancers can be used to drive fluorophores to facilitate imaging and also CRISPR cassettes to facilitate perturbations. A major advantage of the zebrafish is the ease by which large numbers of TME cell types can be studied at once, within the same animal. While these features make the zebrafish well suited to investigate the TME, the model has important limitations, which we also discuss. In this review, we describe the existing toolset for studying the TME using zebrafish models of cancer and highlight unique biological insights that can be gained by leveraging this powerful resource.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping