Vision

adult male and female zebrafishZF-pharma BV is based on the vision that the zebrafish (Danio rerio) is extremely useful as a biomedical preclinical test organism for the development of new diagnostic tools. For many diseases good test systems based on cell lines are not available, and work with patients’ tissue is limited by the availability of samples. Research on mammals is raising ethical concerns and is extremely expensive, requiring huge investment in facilities and animal care takers. Special cell culture systems can be used to some extent (e.g. the micro-mass culture of cells to study cartilage development). For the situations where a whole animal is needed, there are cheaper and more efficient alternatives to mammals. One of the leading vertebrate, non-mammalian models is the zebrafish; a small, tropical fish kept widely as pets. Zebrafish larvae are ideal for the objectives of biomedical screens.


The zebrafish as versatile test model

Zebrafish larvae are easy to obtain in large numbers, they are translucent or transparent in many body parts, their genome is sequenced to an advanced level, and they develop externally (in Petri dishes or multi-wells filled with water, if necessary). Many human disease genes have orthologues in the zebrafish and most genes involved in cellular and molecular processes show strong sequence conservation between zebrafish and human (in their functional domains).

Zebrafish also show conservation of key features of the immune system, infectious disease progression and cancer development. We fully acknowledge the need to use mammalian models for validation of zebrafish findings, but our aim here is to use zebrafish larvae assays, as well as human cell lines, as cost-efficient pre-filters. Zebrafish are not yet perfect models and there still is industry skepticism about their incorporation into existing screening pipelines. However, we believe that within the coming five years our investments in the further development of the zebrafish will surely pay off.

ZF-screens BV has obtained large grants for precompetitive research from both the Dutch Government (Smartmix program) and the European Union. In addition we perform general molecular biological service work in our expertise (e.g. high throughput tuberculosis screens).

We envisage that within five years we will have developed new diagnostic markers useful for biomedical applications.