A fresh look at zebrafish from the perspective of cancer research

Zebrafish represent a vertebrate model organism that has been widely,and increasingly,employed over the last decade in the study of developmental processes,wound healing,microbe-host interactions,and drug screening. with the increase in the laboratory use of zebrafish,several advantages,such as a high genetic homology to humans and transparent embryos,which allow clear disease evaluation,have greatly widened its use as a model for studying tumor development in vivo. the use of zebrafish has been applied in several areas of cancer research,mainly in the following domains: (1) establishing cancer models by carcinogenic chemical,genetic technology,and xenotransplantation; (2) evaluating tumor angiogenesis; (3) studying tumor metastasis; and (4) anti-tumor drug screening and drug toxicity evaluation. in this study,we provide a comprehensive overview of the role of zebrafish in order to underline the advantages of using them as a model organism in cancer research. several related successful events are also reviewed. © 2015 zhao et al.