Vanderbilt Summer Science Academy

Zebrafish Screening

Drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry is a very inefficient and expensive process. Additionally, compounds discovered from in vitro high throughput screening can have many off-target effects and poor bioavailability. It has been found that screening in zebrafish mitigates a large number of these shortcomings. This process includes treating zebrafish early in their development, about 4 hours post fertilization, and observing them until 48 hour post fertilization. During this window, fish showing phenotypes such as short body or stalled development are found and noted. The compounds causing these phenotypes are tabulated with some additional information. Compounds that meet a prescribed criteria for efficacy are then investigated and studied further. We identified a compound that causes a loss of anterior features, such as the head and eye, and a loss of posterior features, such as the tail. We hypothesis that this compound is altering the patterning of these tissues during gastrulation.