Phylonix Pharmaceuticals researchers have announced results that show zebrafish are an efficient and effective animal model for assessing human melanoma, colorectal and pancreatic cancer cells at various stages of tumorigenesis.
According to the researchers, human cancer cells were not rejected by zebrafish embryos, a major problem with other animal models and new zebrafish angiogenic vessels formed in and around human cancer cell masses, similar to the process of cancer progression in humans.
There is growing interest in using zebrafish and some of the advantages in using zebrafish is that they are small; provide an opportunity in short experimental time; there is a statistically significant number of animals per test; zebrafish require only a small amount of drug and they are inexpensive to maintain.
