斑马鱼具有子代数量多、体外受精、胚胎透明、可以做大规模遗传突变筛选等生物学特性,因此成为一种良好的脊椎动物模式生物。随着研究的深入,斑马鱼不仅应用于遗传学和发育生物学研究,而且拓展和延伸到疾病模型和药物筛选领域。作为一种整体动物模型,斑马鱼能够全面地检测评估化合物的活性和副作用,实现高内涵筛选。近年来,科学家们不断地发展出新的斑马鱼疾病模型和新的筛选技术,并找到了一批活性化合物。这些化合物大多数在哺乳动物模型中也有相似的效果,其中前列腺素E2(dmPGE2)和来氟米特(Leflunomide)已经进入临床实验,分别用来促进脐带血细胞移植后的增殖和治疗黑素瘤。这些成果显示了斑马鱼模型很适合用于药物筛选。文章概括介绍了斑马鱼模型的特点和近年来在疾病模型和药物筛选方面的进展,希望能够帮助人们了解斑马鱼在新药研发中的应用,并开展基于斑马鱼模型的药物筛选。
Due to its small size, fast external development, transparent embryos, and amenability to genetic analysis, zebrafish has become an ideal vertebrate animal model. In addition to studies in genetics and developmental biology, zebrafish has also been widely used in human disease modeling and drug screening. As a small whole-organism model, zebrafish can be used to comprehensively test and evaluate the activity and side effect of a compound at the same time, fulfilling high content screening. Recently, new zebrafish disease models and screening technologies have been developed. A number of active compounds were identified and most of them have similar functions in mammal models. One compound prostaglandin E2 has been subjected to clinical trial to test if it can promote the growth of umbilical cord blood units after transplantation. Another compound leflunomide has also been approved in clinical trial to cure melanoma in combination with vemurafenib. These findings demonstrate that zebrafish model is appropriate for drug screening. This review summarizes the unique features of zebrafish model and the recent progresses of zebrafish based drug screening.