Zebrafish as an alternative animal model in human and animal vaccination research

Abstract

Much of medical research relies on animal models to deepen knowledge of the causes of animal and human diseases, as well as to enable the development of innovative therapies. Despite rodents being the most widely used research model worldwide, in recent decades, the use of the zebrafish (Danio rerio) model has exponentially been adopted among the scientific community. This is because such a small tropical freshwater teleost fish has crucial genetic, anatomical and physiological homology with mammals. Therefore, zebrafish constitutes an excellent experimental model for behavioral, genetic and toxicological studies which unravels the mechanism of various human diseases. Furthermore, it serves well to test new therapeutic agents, such as the safety of new vaccines. The aim of this review was to provide a systematic literature review on the most recent studies carried out on the topic. It presents numerous advantages of this type of animal model in tests of efficacy and safety of both animal and human vaccines, thus highlighting gains in time and cost reduction of research and analyzes.

Zebrafish studies on the vaccine candidate to COVID-19, the Spike protein: Production of antibody and adverse reaction

“…Despite this, teleosts produce only three classes of antibodies: IgM 61 , IgW 62 , and IgZ, the latter exclusive to zebrafish 63 . Studies in zebrafish showed that in the regions of the BCR receptor were targets of mutations 5 . Although the affinity of antibodies in ectothermic vertebrates is less efficient than in mammals, the deaminase activation and affinity maturation might contribute to the diversification of antibodies in zebrafish 64,65 .…”

“…The comparison between zebrafish and human genomes revealed remarkable sequence and functional conservation of 70% genetic similarity to humans 3,4 . Zebrafish have been used as a model to study the safety of vaccines 5 and to assess toxicology that could be correlated to human health 6,7 . Recently, the WHO (2020) prepared a document on all vaccine candidates for COVID-19 clinical trials, reporting 35 candidate vaccines in the clinical evaluation and at least 166 vaccine candidates in preclinical and clinical development.…”

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) as an ecotoxicological model for Nanomaterial induced toxicity profiling

“…Subsequently, the presence in fish of innate and adaptive immunity elements assists research in infectious processes, being susceptible to infectious by gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, protozoa, viruses, fungi, and mycobacterium. Advancements in unique cloning, mutagenesis, and transgenesis techniques allowed identifying a significant number of mutants (Bailone et al, 2020).…”

Potenciais usos do modelo animal Zebrafish Danio rerio em pesquisas na Medicina Veterinária

“…De acordo com Bailone et al (2020b), o emprego do Zebrafish como modelo para o desenvolvimento de vacinas de uso veterinário não está restrito ao âmbito de organismos aquáticos, mas também do desenvolvimento de vacinas com agentes etiológicos que acometem outras espécies de animais, como é o caso da tuberculose, na qual o modelo Zebrafish tem sido empregado para a identificação pré-clínica de antígenos de vacinas (OKSANEN et al, 2013;MYLLYMÄKI et al, 2018).…”