Participating in this project is a great opportunity to demonstrate the validity and robustness of the zebrafish in the field of toxicology.
Barcelona, Spain. ZeClinics has been selected to conduct a critical inter-laboratory study to generate data for public use so that researchers can optimize their chemicals in drug development.
The SEAZIT program (Systematic Evaluation of the Application of Zebrafish in Toxicology) will sponsor this study under the National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and it is led jointly by NTP and NICEATM scientists (NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods).
The objective of SEAZIT focuses on the development of best practices for data analysis. Following this line, all the data obtained through this study will be made public, so researchers can use it in the future to assess the toxicity consensus values for each chemical tested.
The specific aim of this project, in which ZeClinics will participate, is to identify relevant sources of variability to draft a new and better-standardized protocol for fish embryos acute toxicity assays. To do so, ZeClinics will assess the toxicological and teratogenic impact of 38 chemicals under different conditions using zebrafish embryos. The small size and rapid development of the zebrafish make it very useful to assess the potential effects of substances on growth and development using high-throughput screening methods.
“Participating in this project is a great opportunity to demonstrate the validity and robustness of the zebrafish in the field of toxicology,” said Dr. Davide D´Amico, Co-Founder and CEO at ZeClinics. He continues, “Currently there is a powerful social impulse aimed at the acceptance of alternative models in biomedical research such as the zebrafish. We are very honored because, with initiatives like this, we are part of this revolution”.
This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Institute of Environmental Health newss, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. Battelle Memorial Institute, located in Columbus, Ohio, serves as prime contractor.