Zebrafish as a model for developmental toxicity assessment

Abstract

The zebrafish embryo has emerged as promising alternative model for traditional in vivo developmental toxicological screening due to their advantageous characteristics as their small size and transparency. In this paper, we reviewed the applicability of the zebrafish embryo model in some relevant areas to human t oxicology as developmental toxicity, cardiovascular toxicity and neurotoxicity (behavioral assessment). Despite the promising results, further optimization and testing of more substances as well as a harmonized methodology is needed to streamline the metho ds and make the assay conducive to medium - throughput.