GIVING children chemotherapy is risky because the drugs are designed to kill
rapidly dividing cells鈥攁nd a child鈥檚 healthy cells are often doing just
that. But it could be possible to find safer drugs for children by testing them
on human tumours grown in the embryos of zebrafish, say researchers from a
Massachusetts company.
Although children can withstand even harsh chemotherapy regimes, there are
often lasting effects. So to test whether potential drugs are safe for children,
George Serbedzija and his colleagues at Phylonix Pharmaceuticals have turned to
the zebrafish, an animal often used by researchers studying development.
The researchers inject human cancer cells into a zebrafish embryo. As the
embryo and cancer cells grow, a human tumour forms inside the fish. Because the
human cells are opaque in an otherwise transparent embryo, it鈥檚 easy to follow
the tumour鈥檚 development.
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To test a drug, it is simply added to the water in which the injected embryo
is developing. An ideal drug, says Serbedzija, would block tumour progression
without harming the embryo.
Although this might seem like an improbable test for new chemotherapy agents,
Tom Curran of St Jude Children鈥檚 Research Hospital in Tennessee, says he likes
to embrace new thinking in this area. 鈥淚f you do something innovative, you never
know what you are going to get out of it.鈥�
