A Review on Zebra Fish as a Preclinical Model for Natural Drug Discovery

Abstract

Natural products represent a significant reservoir of unexplored chemical diversity for early-stage drug discovery. Zebra fish has been used as a preclinical model for identifications of various natural compounds presents on natural products, early life stage tests with zebra fish used to detect toxicity of compounds from natural bloom extract on their embryolarval development. The use of Medicinal plants for treatment of neurological & neuro-degenerative disorders, cardiovascular and anti-melongenesis are very common. Bitter gourd shows anti-diabetic effects by using zebra fish model in a designed experiment. Zebra fish has been used as a tool for discovering of phyto-chemical compounds in natural products and their activities such as, fruit of <i>Terminalia chebula</i> possessing the activity of anti- epileptic, <i>Oxygonum sinuatum</i> and <i>Plectranthus barbatus</i> showed anti-angogensis with the active compounds Emodin & Coleon A lactone. Cardiac toxicity by the fruit extract of <i>M. charantia</i> reported. Zebra fish is gaining more interest as a preclinical tool for drug discovery because it has been demonstrate that pharmacokinetic analysis can be under-taken in this model. The study concludes that and gives a desktop reference to the new researchers in finding out the earlier attempts which were made on zebra fish (Danio rerio) as a preclinical tool in natural product discovery.