Zebrafish as a model for human osteosarcoma.

For various reasons involving biological comparativeness, expansive technological possibilities, accelerated experimental speed, and competitive costs, zebrafish has become a comprehensive model for cancer research. Hence, zebrafish embryos and full-grown fish have been instrumental for studies of leukemia, melanoma, pancreatic cancer, bone tumors, and other malignancies. Although because of its similarities to human osteogenesis zebrafish appears to be an appealing model to investigate osteosarcoma, only a few osteosarcoma specific studies have been accomplished yet. Here, we review interesting related and unrelated reports of which the findings might be extrapolated to osteosarcoma. More importantly, rational but yet unexplored applications of zebrafish are debated to expand the window of opportunities for future establishment of osteosarcoma models. Accordingly technological advances of zebrafish based cancer research, such as robotic high-throughput multicolor injection systems and advanced imaging methods are discussed. Furthermore, various use of zebrafish embryos for screening drug regimens by combinations of chemotherapy, novel drug deliverers, and immune system modulators are suggested. Concerning the etiology, the high degree of genetic similarity between zebrafish and human cancers indicates that affected regions are evolutionarily conserved. Therefore, zebrafish as a swift model system that allows for the investigation of multiple candidate gene-defects is presented.