Advantages of Zebrafish Embryos for Toxicity Testing

Using twenty chemicals commercially available or provided by NCI, we demonstrated the feasibility of using zebrafish embryos to study toxicity response by assessing Median Lethal Concentration (LC50), developmental teratogenicity, and specific liver and kidney toxicity. For the twenty compounds used to study LC50 and liver and kidney toxicity in zebrafish embryos, we found good correlation with LC50 values in other mammalian models. This is strong preliminary validation for use of zebrafish embryos for drug toxicity testing. In addition, 90% (18 of 20) of the compounds produced specific tissue, organ and behavioral toxicity, as expected. The liver toxicity data was obtained using two different assays: a staining method and a colorimetric endpoint assay. This last method allowed us to analyze livergastrointestinal toxicity (dose-response effect) for all the 20 compounds used during this work.