Zebrafish Neurological Disorder Models

Central nervous system (CNS) diseases and disorders, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), schizophrenia (SCZ), Parkinson's disease (PD), and Huntington's disease (HD), signify a global burden on society in terms of disability, economic loss, and human suffering. CNS disorders are multifaceted diseases and often ineffective therapies, with only a few therapeutic drugs being clinically effective. Animal models play an important role in better understanding the pathophysiology of a variety of diseases afflicting humans and also help in the identification of potential therapeutic targets. Recently, zebrafish (Danio rerio) has emerged as a powerful preclinical model for a wide range of brain disorders.

The neuroanatomic and neurochemical pathways of the zebrafish brain exhibit a profound resemblance to the human brain. Physiological, emotional and social behavioral pattern similarities between them have also been well established. Zebrafish possesses excellent cognitive abilities and complex decisionmaking, and, like rodents, display robust behavioral responses to stimuli, with high sensitivity to pharmacological manipulations. A wide range of complex behaviors, ranging from anxiety and aggression to short- and long-term memory, object discrimination and color preference, were recently comprehensively classified and characterized in zebrafish. Therefore, tracing multiple behavioral endpoints contributes to behavioral phenomics and drug screening, especially when empowered by sophisticated automated analysis and high-resolution video-tracking systems.

Figure 1. Development of the zebrafish brain. (Vaz R, et al. 2019)

Our Zebrafish Neurological Disorder Models

Creative Biogene, a zebrafish preclinical contract research organization, offers a suite of zebrafish models of neurological disease which has proven to be valuable for translational neuropharmacology and drug discovery research. The gap between drug discovery based on cellular models and pre-clinical assays can be efficiently bridged by these model system researches.

Zebrafish Alzheimer's Disease Models
Zebrafish Parkinson's Disease Models
Zebrafish Huntington's Disease Models
Zebrafish Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Models
Zebrafish Schizophrenia Models
Zebrafish Epilepsy Models

Besides, we have developed many different techniques to generate the zebrafish disorder models.

Transgenic Zebrafish Models: Depending on the biological question and the type of genetic disease under investigation (recessive or dominant), different specific techniques are used, including transgene overexpression, knockdown techniques and stable mutagenesis.
Generation of a neurodegenerative model using amyloid-β42 (Aβ42) in the adult zebrafish brain.
Zebrafish cell culture-based neurodegenerative disease models.

Creative Biogene has successfully generated multiple zebrafish models to investigate the neurobehavioral bases of various neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions. Contact us for more information on the listed zebrafish disease models or you would like to customize a model to meet your specific needs.

References

Fontana B D, et al. The developing utility of zebrafish models of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders: a critical review. Experimental neurology, 2018, 299: 157-171.
Pitchai A, et al. Zebrafish as an emerging model for bioassay-guided natural product drug discovery for neurological disorders. Medicines, 2019, 6(2): 61.
Vaz R, et al. Zebrafish Models of Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Limitations and Benefits of Current Tools and Techniques. International journal of molecular sciences, 2019, 20(6): 1296.
Saleem S, Kannan R R. Zebrafish: an emerging real-time model system to study Alzheimer's disease and neurospecific drug discovery. Cell death discovery, 2018, 4(1): 1-13.

For research use only. Not intended for any clinical use.

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