Oral dosing in adult zebrafish: proof-of-concept using pharmacokinetics and pharmacological evaluation of carbamazepine.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS We describe a method for obtaining pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacology data from adult zebrafish in terms of mg/kg using a novel method of oral administration. Using carbamazepine (CBZ) as a test drug, we employed dried blood spot (DBS) cards to enable drug quantification for PK; and we evaluated the pharmacological anxiolytic effect using novel tank test. RESULTS The PK study confirmed the presence of CBZ in both blood and brain and the behavioural study showed dose dependent anxiolytic effect. The reproducibility of oral dosing was confirmed by the fact that the results obtained in both the experiments had negligible errors. CONCLUSIONS This report enables a novel approach for optimizing the utility of zebrafish in drug discovery and drug delivery research.