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© Oxford University Press 2007.
NEWS |
STRIPES ARE STARS
Zebrafish Take the Stage in Cancer Research
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Cancer biologists are dangling a little striped fish as bait to net answers to many unresolved cancer research questions. Commonly known as the zebrafish and found in your local pet store, the species Danio rerio is helping scientists investigate a wide variety of malignancies, including breast and colon cancer, melanoma, and leukemia. And researchers hope the small translucent vertebrate will help make some processes, such as angiogenesis or genomic instability, more transparent.
"There's quite a bit of interest in this new animal model," says breast cancer researcher Richard Klemke, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Diego. He takes advantage of the fish's thin skin to watch fluorescent tumor cells as they migrate through tissues to find out why some cancers become so invasive.
Molecular oncologist Thomas Look, M.D., of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, says that the zebrafish field has grown substantially in the last 7 years, due partly
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