Development and Validation of Type 2 Diabetic Zebrafish Model for Cell-Based Treatments

Diabetes mellitus can be categorized as one of the prolonged metabolic disorders that are associated with inappropriately elevated blood glucose levels. Among the subgroups of this disease, type 2 diabetes accounts for the most patients. Although pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical treatments have been employed to control the progression of the disease, as with any treatment approach, both therapeutic approaches are associated with side effects and challenges. Nowadays, the emergence of treatment methods based on stem cells has attracted the attention of researchers in order to treat diabetes fundamentally and provide a long-term solution. Since there are still blind spots regarding the positive and negative effects of these types of treatments, animal studies can give researchers a detailed insight into the effects of stem cell-based treatments. Recently, zebrafish has been proposed as a valuable animal model due to its outstanding genetic and physiological characteristics in biomedical studies including diabetes. Hereupon, in this protocol, the development and validation of type 2 diabetic zebrafish model for cell-based treatments have been explained.