In vivo drug discovery in the zebrafish.

The zebrafish has become a widely used model organism because of its fecundity, its morphological and physiological similarity to mammals, the existence of many genomic tools and the ease with which large, phenotype-based screens can be performed. Because of these attributes, the zebrafish might also provide opportunities to accelerate the process of drug discovery. By combining the scale and throughput of in vitro screens with the physiological complexity of animal studies, the zebrafish promises to contribute to several aspects of the drug development process, including target identification, disease modelling, lead discovery and toxicology.