ZEBRAFISH IN DRUG DISCOVERY

Abstract

The zebra has become a widely used model organism because of its fecundity, its morphological and physiological similarity to mammals. The zebrafish might also provide opportunities to accelerate the process of drug discovery. By combining the scale and throughput of in vitro screens with the physiological complexity of animal studies the zebrafish promises to contribute to several aspects of the development process include target identification, disease modeling, lead discovery and toxicology. The NIH has ranked it as the third most important experimental organism after man the Sanger Centre is sequencing the genome and many medical researchers are shifting over to it. But will the zebrafish have a role in drug discovery? Will it suffer with the same issues which have beset the invertebrate model organisms? This article explores why, used appropriately, this need not be the case and how zebrafish may add value to particular steps of the drug discovery chain