Zebrafish as a model organism for the study of toxicity and effectiveness of new antitumor therapies

Abstract

The zebrafish have many advantages that led to be a model organism with a great potential in translational research. The zebrafish embryos are an ideal platform to evaluate novel cancer therapies. For this reason, the main goal of this thesis has been evaluating the therapeutic potential of different anticancer therapies in zebrafish embryos. To accomplish this, we evaluated the toxicity in vitro and in vivo of some commonly used anticancer drugs in order to determinate crucial toxicological profiles for zebrafish xenograft studies. Additionally, we develop a newly nanoemulsion based on the anticancer drug edelfosine which let us to study parameters such as toxicity, biodistribution and efficacy in xenografted zebrafish models.