1389-2002/09 $55.00+.00 © 2009 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd. Zebrafish: A Complete Animal Model for In Vivo Drug Discovery and Development

Abstract: In last few years, the use of zebrafish (Danio rerio) in scientific research is growing very rapidly. Initially, it was a popular as a model of vertebrate development because zebrafish embryos are transparent and also develop rapidly. Presently, the research using ze-brafish is expanding into other areas such as pharmacology, clinical research as a diseases model and interestingly in drug discovery. The use of zebrafish in pharmaceutical research and discovery and drug development is mainly screening of lead compounds, target identifi-cation, target validation, morpholino oligonucleotide screens, assay development for drug discovery, physiology based drug discovery, quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) and structure –activity relationships (SAR) study and drug toxicity study. In this pa-per, we have described properly all the areas of dug discovery where zebrafish is used as a tool. We are hopeful that the use of these techniques or methods will make the zebrafish a prominent model in drug discovery and development research in the forthcoming years