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Catch of the day: zebrafish as a human cancer model

Oncogene volume 27, pages 4509–4520 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Zebrafish are making big waves in the field of cancer research. The effect has been widespread and continues to gain speed as more and more cancer researchers ride the wave of zebrafish biology. This has been largely due to the development of transgenic and xenograft models of cancer, which recapitulate many aspects of different human cancers including lymphoblastic T-cell leukemia, pancreatic cancer, melanoma and rhabdomyosarcoma. These models are already being utilized by academia and industry to search for genetic and chemical modifiers of cancer with success. The attention has been further stimulated by the amenability of zebrafish to pharmacological testing and the superior imaging properties of fish tissues that allow visualization of cancer progression and angiogenesis in live animals. This review summarizes the current zebrafish models of cancer and discusses their utility in human cancer research and future directions in the field.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Mike Fried and Dr Tony Karnezis (UCSF), and Laurie Gay (UCSD) for critical reading of the paper. This work was supported by CBCRP postdoctoral fellowship no. 11FB-0088 (to KS) and NIH grants GM068487 and CA097022 (to RK). We also thank Dr Richard White for providing images of zebrafish casper mutant and discussion of its possible applications.

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  1. Department of Pathology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    K Stoletov & R Klemke

  2. Moores Cancer Center, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    K Stoletov & R Klemke

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  1. K Stoletov
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  2. R Klemke
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Correspondence to R Klemke.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Oncogene website (http://www.nature.com/onc).

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Stoletov, K., Klemke, R. Catch of the day: zebrafish as a human cancer model. Oncogene 27, 4509–4520 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/onc.2008.95

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