title: Fish tales: The use of zebrafish xenograft human cancer cell models.
abstract: Advances in scientific techniques have provided researchers with exceptional new opportunities to identify and monitor changes between different cancer types, during different stages of progression, between individual tumor cells and in the surrounding stroma. The wealth of information that can be obtained from new scientific techniques places additional requirements on the conventional cancer models. New models that could be used to rapidly access the (potential) functional importance of newly identified (epi)genetic and proteomic changes and test the efficacy on emerging (combinatorial) therapies are desperately required. The distinctive characteristics of zebrafish are progressively being applied to create more relevant models of human diseases. Zebrafish embryos provide a powerful tool to develop functional cancer models. This is a tool that can be used from drug discovery and development to assessment of drug toxicity. This review will summarise the use of zebrafish xenograft models to study human cancers, and discuss the benefits and limitations of these models.
authors.affiliation: Edinburgh Cancer Research UK Centre, MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Yvette
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Drabsch
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: B Ewa
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Snaar-Jagalska
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Cancer Genomics Centre Netherlands, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands. p.ten_Dijke@lumc.nl.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ten Dijke
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian; D006801:Humans; D007814:Larva; D009368:Neoplasm Transplantation; D023041:Xenograft Model Antitumor Assays; D015027:Zebrafish