Toxicity evaluation of pharmaceutical drugs and quantum dots (QDs) using zebrafish embryos – A comprehensive review

IF 2.7 4区生物学 Q2 BIOCHEMICAL RESEARCH METHODS

SLAS Discovery Pub Date : 2025-06-03 DOI:10.1016/j.slasd.2025.100241

Motunrayo Faderera Adegoke , Olamide Abiodun Daramola , Kayode Omotayo Adeniyi , Madan Poka , Patrick Hulisani Demana , Xavier Siwe Noundou

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Drug discovery and development have been a significant focus of medicinal and pharmaceutical research, continually striving to meet the growing challenges posed by complex diseases and medical conditions. In drug development, quantum dots (QDs) can be utilized in fluorescent assays for drug discovery and as fluorescent labels in drug delivery systems to monitor the metabolism of drugs in the body. As efforts to unravel the mysteries of human health and design innovative therapeutic solutions increase, the roles of model organisms in advancing understanding and accelerating discovery and development are also expanding. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) have emerged as a prominent model organism in the field of drug screening and development due to their unique biological attributes and experimental advantages. Many pharmaceutical products and drugs developed in the pharmaceutical industry fail in clinical trials due to unanticipated toxic side effects. Similarly, despite the interesting characteristics and versatile applications of QDs in drug development, there are a limited number of clinical trials involving QDs, hindered by complex pharmaceutical, industrial, technical, and biological challenges such as toxicity. Therefore, this article aims to highlight the importance of using zebrafish embryos and eleutheroembryos models for the toxicological assessment of pharmaceutical drugs and QDs in drug delivery and development. This review summarizes the developments available in the literature regarding the evaluation of the toxicity of QDs and drugs using zebrafish assays. The use of zebrafish models for safety profiling and pharmacological preclinical screening of pharmaceutical drugs and QDs will provide more insights than cellular assays and offer valuable information for mammalian experiments.

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利用斑马鱼胚胎进行药物和量子点的毒性评价综述

药物发现和开发一直是医学和制药研究的一个重要焦点，不断努力满足复杂疾病和医疗条件带来的日益增长的挑战。在药物开发中，量子点（QDs）可以用于药物发现的荧光分析，也可以作为药物传递系统中的荧光标记来监测药物在体内的代谢。随着解开人类健康之谜和设计创新治疗方案的努力增加，模式生物在促进理解和加速发现和发展方面的作用也在扩大。斑马鱼（Danio rerio）因其独特的生物学特性和实验优势，已成为药物筛选和开发领域的重要模式生物。制药工业开发的许多药品和药物由于意想不到的毒副作用而在临床试验中失败。同样，尽管量子点在药物开发中具有有趣的特性和广泛的应用，但涉及量子点的临床试验数量有限，受到复杂的制药、工业、技术和生物学挑战（如毒性）的阻碍。因此，本文旨在强调利用斑马鱼胚胎和鳗胚胎模型进行药物毒理学评估和药物传递和开发中的量子点的重要性。本文综述了利用斑马鱼试验评价量子点和药物毒性的文献进展。使用斑马鱼模型进行药物和量子点的安全性分析和临床前药理筛选，将比细胞分析提供更多的见解，并为哺乳动物实验提供有价值的信息。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

SLAS Discovery Chemistry-Analytical Chemistry

CiteScore

7.00

自引率

3.20%

发文量

审稿时长

39 days

期刊介绍： Advancing Life Sciences R&D: SLAS Discovery reports how scientists develop and utilize novel technologies and/or approaches to provide and characterize chemical and biological tools to understand and treat human disease. SLAS Discovery is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes scientific reports that enable and improve target validation, evaluate current drug discovery technologies, provide novel research tools, and incorporate research approaches that enhance depth of knowledge and drug discovery success. SLAS Discovery emphasizes scientific and technical advances in target identification/validation (including chemical probes, RNA silencing, gene editing technologies); biomarker discovery; assay development; virtual, medium- or high-throughput screening (biochemical and biological, biophysical, phenotypic, toxicological, ADME); lead generation/optimization; chemical biology; and informatics (data analysis, image analysis, statistics, bio- and chemo-informatics). Review articles on target biology, new paradigms in drug discovery and advances in drug discovery technologies. SLAS Discovery is of particular interest to those involved in analytical chemistry, applied microbiology, automation, biochemistry, bioengineering, biomedical optics, biotechnology, bioinformatics, cell biology, DNA science and technology, genetics, information technology, medicinal chemistry, molecular biology, natural products chemistry, organic chemistry, pharmacology, spectroscopy, and toxicology. SLAS Discovery is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and was published previously (1996-2016) as the Journal of Biomolecular Screening (JBS).