Transplantable tumor lines generated in clonal zebrafish

Transplantable zebrafish tumors are a novel and very promising model in cancer research. However, further progress in this field has been contained by a lack of true inbred lines in zebrafish. To overcome this problem, we generated two lines of homozygous diploid clonal zebrafish lines (i.e., CB1 and CW1), which allowed us to carry out transplantation of any tissue, including tumors, from one fish to another within a line without rejection of the graft. The primary tumors in CB1 fish were induced by N-nitrosodiethylamine (DEN). The histologic analysis of these tumors revealed different types of hepatocellular carcinomas, hepatoblastomas, hepatoma, cholangiocarcinoma, and pancreatic carcinoma. Four spontaneous acinar cell carcinomas of pancreas were also found in 10- to 18-month-old CB1 fish. Small pieces of tissue or cell suspensions of either DEN-induced or spontaneous tumors were serially transplanted into the peritoneal cavity of syngeneic fish at different stages of development from 5-day-old larvae to adult fish. The development of grossly visible tumors occurred from 2 weeks to 3 months after tumor grafting and grew either as solitary smooth nodules or as an amorphous jelly-like mass infiltrating abdominal organs. The majority of tumors were also successfully transplanted to isogeneic (F1 generation from crossing CB1 x CW1) fish. At the present time, 19 transplantable zebrafish tumor lines have been generated and maintained for as long as 3 to 25 passages. This model provides a novel tool for studying experimental tumor biology and therapy and will become a cost effective system for high throughput screening of anticancer drugs.