Science

Zebrafish Helping To Cure Cancer

How Zebrafish can cure cancer.

Source: www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk

“Zebrafish in Research Lab for Animal Testing” by www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk is marked with CC BY 2.0.

Cancer research has been an ongoing mission for decades. Scientist all around the world are trying new things to cure this medical tragedy the kills millions every year. One unique approach to cancer research in using zebrafish as a model. Zebrafish have many qualities that make them perfect model organisms. For starters, they are small and easy to take care of. Zebrafish are semi-transparent meaning you can observe them easily. They reproduce fast and the mature very quickly. Zebrafish have almost the same organ system and tissues as humans which make them such good models.

Research labs, such as the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, have programs that use zebrafish as cancer models. They conduct experiments that involve zebrafish and cancer patients. One example is taking cancerous cells from the patients and inject them into either a full grown zebrafish or an embryo. The scientist will then test different medicine or other methods and record their effect on the zebrafish. Testing medicine on the fish instead of humans can make sure no danger goes their way. They can also test medicine way faster on the fish and can get through more variants. Eric Glasgow and Matthew Swift are the two main scientist that run the program that take care and experiment on zebrafish. They test the medicine on the fish while the rest of the Georgetown Cancer Center makes it. They then send the results back to the rest of the center to improve it. Its crazy to think that such a small animal is making a huge difference.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2021.616551/full

https://www.criver.com/eureka/the-tiny-zebrafish-is-becoming-a-big-cancer-model

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrc3589