Fat zebrafish have amazing uses! New model for screening weight loss pills

Obesity is the biggest invisible killer affecting national health, so obesity research and drug development are urgent. In the past, clinical research mostly used rats as test subjects. However, Lin Daxiong, director of the Department of Pediatric Genetics at Taipei Mackay Memorial Hospital, and Xiao Chongde, assistant professor of the Department of Biotechnology at Chung Yuan Christian University, worked together to successfully develop the first Akt transgenic obese zebrafish, which serves as an animal model for studying obesity and developing weight loss drugs. In the future, it may also become an economic crop for extracting fish oil, which has attracted great attention from the international medical community.

Lin Daxiong (right), director of the Department of Pediatric Genetics at Mackay Memorial Hospital, and Xiao Chongde, assistant professor of the Department of Biotechnology at Chung Yuan Christian University, successfully developed the first Akt transgenic obese zebrafish. (Photo by Zhang Shijie)

Chief Physician Lin Daxiong said that zebrafish is a small subtropical freshwater fish that has been widely used around the world in recent years to study the embryonic development of vertebrates, and has even been extended to disease research, drug screening, and toxicity testing. Since the Akt signaling pathway is associated with cell growth, cell survival, adipogenesis, and lipid production, we constructed an Akt-overactivated zebrafish to study the regulatory mechanism of adipogenesis.

The research results found that zebrafish with overactivated Akt began to become significantly obese after feeding. Not only did their blood sugar regulation ability deteriorate, but their activity and survival rate also decreased significantly. These phenomena are the same as human obesity. Further studies have shown that the main symptom of obesity is the excessive accumulation of triglycerides. At the same time, genes related to fat and lipid production are highly regulated in tissues, thus leading to the ultimate formation of obesity.

Assistant Professor Xiao Chongde pointed out that in addition to being an ornamental fish, zebrafish can also be used for drug screening in the laboratory. This is mainly because zebrafish are vertebrates and have various organ systems similar to those of humans, such as the cardiovascular system, nervous system, and digestive system. In particular, zebrafish embryos are very small, requiring very small doses of drugs, and they develop quickly, which is more economical and faster than using white mice for testing.

Zebrafish is a small subtropical freshwater fish that has been widely used around the world in recent years to study the embryonic development of vertebrates, and has even been extended to disease research, drug screening and toxicity testing. (Photo by Zhang Shijie)

In addition to being used as an animal model for studying the pathogenesis of obesity and metabolic syndrome, this new Akt transgenic obese zebrafish can also be used as a new platform for rapid screening of new therapeutic drugs. In addition, since obese fish contain more fat, artificial breeding can also be used as a source of fish oil, avoiding the problem of heavy metal pollution in the ocean.

In addition to being published in the authoritative scientific journal "Public Library of Science" (PLoS One), this research has also been selected by the authoritative journal "Disease Models & Mechanisms" (Disease Models & Mechanisms), which specializes in disease mechanisms, as one of the important innovative biological model research of the season. This research finding is currently under patent review, and we will actively discuss the possibility of further cooperation with the outside world in the future.