Technology
Compound Toxicity
Fast development, small size and optical transparency at early developmental stages make zebrafish model widely used for high-throughput chemical screenings in 96-well format, while high range of the fluorescent zebrafish reporter lines provide a strong base for the visualization and evaluation of the screens focused on the tissue specificity.
DanioReadout offers wide range of the phenotype-based readouts of the chemical screens using the in-house developed image analysis methods including lethal concentration (LC50), and developmental defects. Our cardiac readouts provide information including heart beat frequency, arrhythmia, heart edema and heart contraction intensity.
Zebrafish heart rate, cardiac electrophysiological properties as well as response to several tested common cardiovascular drugs present striking similarities to the human heart.
Cancer Modelling
Danio rerio xenotransplantation techniques is rapidly gaining interest as a preclinical tool in the field of cancer research. The zebrafish embryo is ideal for both cancer cell line and primary patient material studies. Advantages of using zebrafish system include low number of transplanted cells (50 to 300 cells per embryo), availability of transgenic lines, readouts available after just 3 to 4 days post injections and embryo transparency.
Based on the cancer type, xenotransplantations can be performed into the brain ventricle, blood stream, perivitelline cavity or yolk, with set of readouts as tumor growth, metastasis, blood vessels infiltration and interactions between cancer cells and host macrophages.
We are currently participating in several cancer related pilot studies and are interested to hear what are your needs within this service area.
Genetic Model Development
CRISPR/Cas9 knock-out fish are created by introducing small insertions or deletions early in the coding sequence of the gene leading to the occurrence of the premature STOP codon, or by deletion of the gene promotor region. Similarly, CRISPR/Cas9 can be used for generation of targeted insertions.
Out team has experience of generating and evaluating of over 150 gene knock-outs and several novel transgenic lines for gene function and disease modelling purpose. This service can be used to evaluate innovative drug targets or to create genetic disease models.
High-Throughput Phenotypic screening using image analysis and AI
We have a long experience with developing and running quantification methods of zebrafish image data for various applications. Our in-house developed image analysis pipelines together with rapid imaging techniques has enabled us to accommodate many researchers working with zebrafish.
Recent advances in data driven development and Artificial Intelligence (AI) together with our large collection of zebrafish data has provided us with unique opportunity to develop novel methods using deep learning and AI.