Abstract
Over the past 15 years, zebrafish have emerged as a powerful tool for studying human cancers. Transgenic techniques have been employed to model different types of tumors, including leukemia, melanoma, glioblastoma and endocrine tumors. These models present histopathological and molecular conservation with their human cancer counterparts and have been fundamental for understanding mechanisms of tumor initiation and progression. Moreover, xenotransplantation of human cancer cells in embryos or adult zebrafish offers the advantage of studying the behavior of human cancer cells in a live organism. Chemical-genetic screens using zebrafish embryos have uncovered novel druggable pathways and new therapeutic strategies, some of which are now tested in clinical trials. In this review, we will report on recent advances in using zebrafish as a model in cancer studies—with specific focus on four cancer types—where zebrafish has contributed to novel discoveries or approaches to novel therapies.
Highlights
In the last 15 years zebrafish has emerged as a powerful model for studying both developmental processes and human diseases
We provide an overview of four different cancers that have been modeled in zebrafish, highlighting key advances in understanding their biology
We discussed the power of zebrafish in finding new targeted and personalized treatments for leukemia, melanoma, glioma and endocrine tumors, which should lead to better clinical outcomes and less toxicity for patients
Summary
In the last 15 years zebrafish has emerged as a powerful model for studying both developmental processes and human diseases. Many commercially available antibodies do not recognize zebrafish proteins, making proteomic studies difficult Despite these limitations, in the last decade zebrafish has been used in cancer research to model several types of cancer using different methods, including treatment with carcinogens, transgenesis, and transplantation of zebrafish or mammalian tumor cells [3]. We provide an overview of four different cancers (leukemia, melanoma glioblastoma and endocrine tumors) that have been modeled in zebrafish, highlighting key advances in understanding their biology These models represent only a few zebrafish cancer models studied so far, as several other models have been generated and extensively characterized, including neuroblastoma [6] and pancreatic cancer [7]. We will discuss the potentials of translating discoveries made in the zebrafish system into preclinical and clinical investigations with the aim of identifying new therapeutic approaches for cancer
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