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Updated: Nov 16, 2025

Drug Screening of Primary Patient Derived Tumor Xenografts in Zebrafish
Published on: April 10, 2020
Benefits of Zebrafish Xenograft Models in Cancer Research
Xingyu Chen1,2, Yongyun Li1,2, Tengteng Yao1,2
1Department of Ophthalmology, Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
As a promising in vivo tool for cancer research, zebrafish have been widely applied in various tumor studies. The zebrafish xenograft model is a low-cost, high-throughput tool for cancer research that can be established quickly and requires only a small sample size, which makes it favorite among researchers. Zebrafish patient-derived xenograft (zPDX) models provide promising evidence for short-term clinical treatment. In this review, we discuss the characteristics and advantages of zebrafish, such as their transparent and translucent features, the use of vascular fluorescence imaging, the establishment of metastatic and intracranial orthotopic models, individual pharmacokinetics measurements, and tumor microenvironment. Furthermore, we introduce how these characteristics and advantages are applied other in tumor studies. Finally, we discuss the future direction of the use of zebrafish in tumor studies and provide new ideas for the application of it.

