Good news! Seems to be a great idea! Cancer is history (soon)!
"Picking the right cancer treatment for a person is no easy task, but researchers are hoping fish could lend a hand—or a fin. When several roughly equivalent treatment options are available, patients often have to endure one noxious therapy after another to settle on one that helps. Genomic analysis can sometimes winnow the choices, but even when a patient’s cancer carries mutations that point to a specific treatment, there’s no guarantee it will respond.
A 5-year study starting this month in Portugal offers an unusual alternative: Researchers will isolate cancer cells from a patient, fluorescently tag them in the lab, and transplant them into transparent zebrafish embryos. Researchers will then add cancer drugs to the fishes’ water or deliver doses of radiation, and then observe the fluorescent tumor cells to quickly gauge whether the patient’s actual cancer is likely to be sensitive to the same treatments. Equally important, by revealing options that probably won’t work, the fish avatars might spare patients from potentially toxic but futile therapies. ..."
"... Led by developmental biologist Rita Fior of the Champalimaud Foundation, the 5-year study is the first randomized trial in which patients will receive drugs that have been tested beforehand in zebrafish embryos implanted with the patients’ cancer cells. Retrospective studies have shown that so-called zebrafish avatars could have identified successful treatments if they had been deployed in advance, and Fior and colleagues now want to determine whether that ability can benefit patients. ...
A menagerie of other cancer avatars already exists—including mice, fruit flies, and cell cultures—all meant to serve as personalized testbeds for treatments. But all have limitations. ..."
Fish implanted with tumor cells could help oncologists quickly personalize cancer treatments "The first clinical trial of zebrafish embryos acting as cancer “avatars” will start soon"
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