Zebrafish as a vertebrate model for high-throughput drug toxicity screening: Mechanisms, novel techniques, and future perspectives

作者：W. Wang, Xuan Gao, Lin Liu, Sheng Guo, Jin‐Ao Duan, Ping Xiao · 发表于：Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.jpha.2025.101195 · 被引用次数：25 · 研究领域：Zebrafish Biomedical Research Applications、Receptor Mechanisms and Signaling、Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration Mechanisms

Drug toxicity is closely related to both clinical drug safety and new drug development. Therefore, it is vital to understand the mechanisms of drug toxicity fully and to use appropriate research models with advanced technologies. Zebrafish has become an important vertebrate animal model for high-throughput drug screening and toxicity assessment. At the same time, zebrafish has an intact biological complexity, reflecting the whole organism's toxicity, which gives it an advantage over other high-throughput models in toxicity studies. Despite the gradual increase in toxicity studies utilizing zebrafish, a comprehensive and systematic review of the underlying mechanisms and new techniques is still lacking. This review aims to analyze common toxicity mechanisms in zebrafish models, such as oxidative stress, endoplasmic reticulum stress, inflammation, and apoptosis, and macroscopic changes in biological processes like lipid metabolism disorders and neurotransmitter expression abnormalities. It also introduces new technologies applied in toxicity assessment, such as gene editing, novel fluorescence imaging technology, 3D imaging technology, and novel automated technology for high-throughput screening, such as fish capsules. In addition, it also summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the model. By doing so, it will provide new suggestions for the development and improvement of the model, make it better serve the toxicity study of clinical drugs and provide a more comprehensiv...