title: Zebrafish: a complete animal model for in vivo drug discovery and development.
abstract: In last few years, the use of zebrafish (Danio rerio) in scientific research is growing very rapidly. Initially, it was a popular as a model of vertebrate development because zebrafish embryos are transparent and also develop rapidly. Presently, the research using zebrafish is expanding into other areas such as pharmacology, clinical research as a diseases model and interestingly in drug discovery. The use of zebrafish in pharmaceutical research and discovery and drug development is mainly screening of lead compounds, target identification, target validation, morpholino oligonucleotide screens, assay development for drug discovery, physiology based drug discovery, quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) and structure -activity relationships (SAR) study and drug toxicity study. In this paper, we have described properly all the areas of drug discovery where zebrafish is used as a tool. We are hopeful that the use of these techniques or methods will make the zebrafish a prominent model in drug discovery and development research in the forthcoming years.
authors.affiliation: Department of Marine Biotechnology and Resources, College of Marine Science and Division of Marine Biotechnology, Asia-Pacific Ocean Research Center, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohisung, Taiwan. drchiranjib@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Chiranjib
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chakraborty
authors.forename: Chi Hsin
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Zhi Hong
authors.initials: ZH
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.forename: Chang Shing
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Govindasamy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Agoramoorthy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D015195:Drug Design; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000379:methods; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical / Q000379:methods*; D023421:Models, Animal; D021281:Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship; D018675:Toxicity Tests / Q000379:methods; D015027:Zebrafish