In order to cure the intractable diseases of human beings, these little fishes tried their own medicine
7 days
In zebrafish, it may only take 7 days to complete the process of establishing disease models, administering drugs, and collecting test results.
It will take at least a few months to change to other animals.
◎The reporter Wang Yanbin, correspondent well water
The body is slender, and the whole body is covered with many dark blue stripes. When swimming in groups, it resembles a herd of zebras galloping on the African grasslands. This carp called "zebrafish" has been studied in biology at Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences) It is not uncommon to see in the Institute (hereinafter referred to as the Institute of Biology).
Right now, Zhang Yun, director of the Key Laboratory of Drug Screening Technology, and his colleagues are busy injecting specific Chinese herbal medicines into the zebrafish body, and observing where and how the drugs are in the fish body through its transparent body.
Their idea is very clear, using zebrafish and human gene homology as high as 87% characteristics to solve some medical problems.
Liu Kechun, director of the Institute of Biology, said in an interview with a reporter from Science and Technology Daily on January 10: "In order to cure difficult human diseases, we are using zebrafish to tap the potential of Chinese medicine."
Use scientific data to present the "unexplainable, unclear" efficacy of Chinese medicine
In the zebrafish breeding room of the Institute of Biology, hundreds of fish tanks breed countless zebrafish.
They are implanted with fluorescent proteins while the embryos are developing.
After injecting the experimental drug, scientists can easily observe the subtle changes in the relevant parts.
Last year, the zebrafish model was used here to screen and evaluate the enhanced immune activity of Chinese medicine samples from the Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and Shandong Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, providing effective experimental data for Chinese medicine to treat new coronary pneumonia.
Prior to this, it provided zebrafish screening services to the United Kingdom thousands of miles away, and applied network pharmacology methods to discover a newly synthesized compound-Danshensu Borneol ester can regulate angiogenesis through AKT and MAKP signaling pathways.
This result means that Danshensu Borneol ester has the potential to treat cardiovascular diseases (such as myocardial infarction).
Active ingredient screening is the starting point and a decisive step for innovative drug research.
There are more than 12,000 kinds of Chinese medicinal materials in my country, each of which contains a large number of active ingredients.
For a long time, "which components of traditional Chinese medicines play which role" and "where is the scientific basis for their role" have been plagued scientists.
Nowadays, one of the directions that the drug screening team of the Institute of Biology is working hard is to test the zebrafish and let it "show up", and use scientific experiments and accurate The data is presented.
“Ancient traditional Chinese medicine contains many kinds of medicinal materials, but what works is the compounds produced during the preparation of traditional Chinese medicine. Which ingredients are effective and how to mix different ingredients need to be evaluated through screening.” As the chief scientist of the team, Liu Kechun told reporters , Using the zebrafish platform can accelerate the exploration of the combination and compatibility of the effective ingredients of Chinese medicine, and help traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine to better integrate.
Drug toxicity is one of the main reasons for the failure of drug development.
According to statistics, during the drug discovery and preclinical research phases, 40% of the drugs were eliminated due to safety issues; during the clinical trial phase, 60% of the drugs would be terminated due to liver, heart, or neurotoxicity.
Zhang Yun told reporters that the use of zebrafish reagents can evaluate the toxicity of the drug based on the malformation rate and mortality of its embryos and reduce the risk of drug development.
New model animals for mining active ingredients of drugs
Looking around the world, zebrafish, as a new model animal, is being used by more and more scientists to find new therapeutic drugs.
"The diameter of zebrafish embryos is only 3-4 millimeters, and the amount of experimental drugs required is very small. This allows us to do large-scale experiments at one time and observe the results at the same time." In Zhang Yun's eyes, zebrafish are low-cost, small and easy Feeding; more importantly, in zebrafish, it may only take 7 days to complete the process of establishing disease models, administering drugs, and collecting test results.
It will take at least a few months to change to other animals.
In a blink of an eye, the screening team of the Institute of Biology has been deeply involved in the field of human disease zebrafish model construction and drug screening for 15 years.
They have established more than 40 zebrafish activity screening and safety evaluation models, covering major organs and tissues such as cardiovascular, tumor, bone, and skin; at the same time, they have formed a research and development technology featuring zebrafish with independent intellectual property rights in China System, and is transformed into actual productivity.
The reporter learned that the institute cooperated with international counterparts to carry out large-scale screening of anti-tumor active ingredients in Chinese medicinal materials, and established a zebrafish model-based Chinese medicinal materials to inhibit angiogenesis.
The screening of active ingredients of Chinese medicinal materials is expected to discover active ingredients or compositions with novel structures and make innovative results.
They provide companies with product development and medical testing services, using the established drug safety evaluation technology based on the zebrafish model, in the past three years, they have completed heart, liver, kidney and other target organ toxicity evaluations and various early safety evaluation technical services More than 200 items, nearly 400 toxic compounds were excluded, avoiding indirect losses of over 80 million yuan caused by R&D failure.
Using the zebrafish activity screening model, they discovered 2 new traditional Chinese medicine compounds and more than 30 new drug lead compounds, assisted Wohua Pharmaceutical to complete the process transformation of Xinkeshu, and discovered the new efficacy of "Shenzhiling".