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Customized Zebrafish Models of Retinal Vascular Disease

Defects in the retinal vasculature may cause different developmental visual impairments. As one of the global leaders in eye disease solutions, Ace Therapeutics is pleased to help you move to the next stage of your experiment through our efforts. Here, we provide different types of zebrafish retinal vascular disease models, including a hyperglycemic zebrafish model, the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) knockout zebrafish model, and the hypoxia-induced zebrafish retinopathy model. These models bring more opportunities for the discovery and screening of your new anti-angiogenic drugs.

Zebrafish Models of Retinal Vascular Disease

Why Choose Zebrafish To Study Retinal Vascular Disease?

Retinal diseases that cause vision impairment and blindness have a serious negative impact on large populations' quality of life. Pathological retinal angiogenesis is a key factor in the development of retinal diseases of all ages, including diabetic retinopathy (DR), age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). Therefore, a flexible animal model is urgently needed to study the mutation gene y and the physiological and pathological molecular mechanisms that cause visual impairment. As an alternative vertebrate model system, the zebrafish has emerged as an excellent choice for studying retinal vascular diseases. The small size, external and rapid development, and optical transparency of zebrafish embryos are some of the advantages offered by the zebrafish model system. Additionally, due to the striking similarities in their vasculature between zebrafish and humans, zebrafish have been used to understand retinal disease mechanisms and develop therapeutics to combat these diseases.

Fig. 1. Adult zebrafish have a complex system of retinal blood vessels. (lvarez Y, et al., 2007)

Service Overview

In recent years, Ace Therapeutics has paid more and more attention to zebrafish as a model organism for ocular disease mechanisms. In addition to easy maintenance and relatively low cost, 84% of known human disease-associated genes have orthologs in this model. In addition, zebrafish retinal vasculature is derived from hyaline vasculature, which is comparable to human retinal vasculature. This has greatly attracted our scientists to explore zebrafish models related to retinal vascular diseases, so as to help our customers screen new anti-angiogenic drugs for ocular diseases.

In Ace Therapeutics' laboratories, our researchers have developed several diseases that mimic pathological retinal vessels in humans, including retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), diabetic retinopathy (DR), and age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Explore Ace Therapeutics' Rodent Ocular Disease Models

Ace Therapeutics offers a hyperglycemic zebrafish model with retinal abnormalities consistent with those seen in diabetes patients. Our researchers induced hyperglycemia in zebrafish by exposing zebrafish larvae 3 days after fertilization to an embryo culture medium containing a glucose solution (high glucose condition). This model shows pathological changes in the retinal vasculature such as hyaline retinal vasodilation and elevated levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which can help our customers screen new drug candidates for DR.

In addition, we offer two zebrafish models for neovascularization studies: the von hippel-lindau (VHL) knockout zebrafish model and hypoxia-induced zebrafish retinopathy model (hypoxia-induced retinal angiogenesis model in an adult zebrafish and hypoxia-induced neovascularization model in zebrafish embryos).

Our VHL knockout zebrafish embryo model, an ideal model of neovascular AMD, shows severe neovascularization of choroidal and vitreous vessels, as well as retinal detachment and macular edema.
Hypoxia-induced retinal angiogenesis model in an adult zebrafish can help you understand retinal pathology molecular mechanisms, define new therapeutic targets, and validate potential drugs' efficacy.
Hypoxia-induced neovascularization model in zebrafish embryos can quickly assess the potential efficacy of drug treatments with large sample sizes in a short period of time, which can help you identify novel angiogenesis inhibitors for retinal vascular diseases.

Ace Therapeutics aims to provide a complete retinal vascular disease zebrafish system. This will help our customers understand the developmental processes of ocular disease, identify potentially causal genes for human eye diseases, and develop new treatments. If you are interested in our services or need more detailed information, please feel free to contact us. Our experienced scientists are ready to help you!

References

Alvarez Y, Cederlund ML, Cottell DC, et al. Genetic determinants of hyaloid and retinal vasculature in zebrafish. BMC Dev Biol. 2007, 7:114.
Hong Y, Luo Y. Zebrafish Model in Ophthalmology to Study Disease Mechanism and Drug Discovery. Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2021, 14(8):716.

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