Zebrafish eye tumor model

  Retinoblastoma (Retinoblastoma, RB) is a common eye cancer in children. Among infant eye diseases, it is the most serious and harmful malignant tumor. It occurs in the nuclear layer of the retina and has a family genetic tendency. 90% of the patients are infants under 3 years old. They can suffer from one eye, two eyes one after another or at the same time, and are prone to intracranial and extracranial metastases, often endangering the lives of children. When the tumor proliferates into the vitreous or close to the lens, yellow light reflection appears in the pupil area, so it is called black cat's eye.

   The main treatments now include surgery, radiotherapy, cryotherapy, photocoagulation, chemotherapy, photodynamic therapy and immunotherapy, but surgical removal of the eyeball is still a better treatment. Carboplatin and melphalan are common drugs for the treatment of retinoblastoma, which are used for systemic chemotherapy and ophthalmic artery interventional chemotherapy, respectively. Although these clinical treatments have significantly improved the eyeball retention rate of RB, there are still many patients who must accept the result of lifelong blindness due to eyeball removal. Therefore, we hope to be able to obtain a drug with better efficacy and low toxicity after being administered through vein, artery or vitreous cavity.

  In vitro anticancer drug screening experiment has the advantages of rapid and efficient, but its pharmacodynamics and safety evaluation results are not comparable. The tumor transplantation model commonly used in in vivo experiments for anti-tumor drug screening is immunodeficient nude mice. However, this metastatic system has problems such as uncertain survival rate, time-consuming, and high cost, and it is impossible to quickly screen suitable new drugs. Therefore, the development of a simple, efficient, fast and low-cost in vivo evaluation model is of great significance for the treatment of retinoblastoma.

   Zebrafish is very popular among scholars because of its transparent juvenile stage, small size, low cost, and high homology with the human body. Here will quote the research results of the establishment of zebrafish retinoblastoma orthotopic transplantation model published by Professor Dong HyunJo of Seoul University and others on Molecular Cancer. Dong et al. injected retinoblastoma cells into the vitreous of zebrafish juvenile eyes, and found that cancer cells can survive and proliferate in the vitreous of zebrafish. After the retinoblastoma cells in the zebrafish vitreous were isolated, the analysis by Western Blotting and RT-PCR showed that the cancer cells maintained their biological characteristics after being transferred and separated.