Researchers led by Oregon State University Superfund Research Program grantee Robyn Tanguay, Ph.D., used high-throughput screening to analyze 1,060 unique compounds for 22 possible effects on zebrafish embryos.
Researchers said this is one of the largest systematic in vivo toxicological studies to date. Using zebrafish to test a large number of chemicals with known structures, and look at a large number of effects, will allow the identification of groups of chemicals that may share the same mechanism of toxicity. Chemicals that show a response in zebrafish can also be further studied using other systems, such as cell-based testing.
“Our study demonstrates that it is now possible to rapidly evaluate the bioactivity of a large number of chemicals in the whole animal,” Tanguay (http://tanguaylab.com/?q=user/33) said. “The ability to screen more of the chemical space will help the field move closer to relevant whole animal chemical structure-response relationships for predictive toxicology.”