Zebrafish Wounding-induced Inflammation Models

In normal acute inflammatory situations, such as after tissue damage or infection, the inflammatory response is self-limited and immune cells subside through apoptosis or return to circulation. However, in malignant tissues, where pro-inflammatory signaling continues to increase to support tumor needs, the inflammatory response never subsides, and tissue damage may trigger various cancer development.

The zebrafish is a small bony fish whose immune system is highly similar to that of humans. Zebrafish have received attention in inflammation research over the past few decades after studies revealed that zebrafish display conserved key parts of the adaptive immune system, including thymus development, thymocyte development, and T and B cell function. To date, there have been multiple studies on inflammation caused by physical injury in zebrafish, such as optic nerve crush, ventricle resection, hypoxic/reoxygenated cardiac injury, and traumatic bone injury. Using zebrafish as a preclinical inflammatory disease model can increase our understanding of the complex mechanisms associated with inflammatory disease, opening new avenues for identifying effective and safe pharmacological strategies.

Fig 1. Tail transection in zebrafish larvae as a model for inflammation.

Our Zebrafish Wounding-induced Inflammation Models

We employ tail injury to model acute zebrafish wounding-induced inflammation by amputating partial caudal fins in zebrafish embryos, larvae, and adults or by incising the caudal fin with a sterile scalpel or needle under a stereomicroscope. Acute local inflammatory responses and accumulation of macrophages and neutrophils near the injured area were observed after successful model establishment. In addition to direct transection, we can also create wounds by laser irradiation of the torso epidermis, yolk sac, skeletal muscle tissue, or melanocytes in the yolk sac and tail hematopoietic tissue, which show a stronger inflammatory response in this model and delayed regeneration.

Our zebrafish models of inflammation allow the assessment of many processes involved in regeneration, such as inflammation, cell death, cell migration, cell proliferation and neurogenesis. In addition, these models can be used to study fundamental aspects of the inflammatory response, such as the role of specific signaling pathways, leukocyte migration, and interactions between different immune cells, as well as to screen libraries of natural compounds, approved drugs, and well-characterized pathway inhibitors.

Our Advantages

• Visualizing the relationship between wound-related inflammation and adjacent cancers as they develop in vivo
• Visualize white blood cells
• Expression of fin regeneration and inflammatory markers can be examined at different time points after amputation
• Multiple lesions can be analyzed simultaneously

Creative Biogene provides a variety of zebrafish wounding-induced inflammation models such as skin injury, traumatic brain injury, hypoxia/reoxygenation heart injury and traumatic bone injury. If you want to know more about zebrafish models, please feel free to contact us.

References

1. Gan D, et al. Application of the Zebrafish Traumatic Brain Injury Model in Assessing Cerebral Inflammation. Zebrafish. 2020, 17(2):73-82.
2. Zanandrea R, et al. Zebrafish as a model for inflammation and drug discovery. Drug Discov Today. 2020, 25(12):2201-2211.
3. Belo MAA, et al. Zebrafish as a model to study inflammation: A tool for drug discovery. Biomed Pharmacother. 2021, 144:112310.

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