Development of a Zebrafish Model for Rapid Drug Screening against Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease, the leading cause of dementia in the elderly, is a complex neurodegenerative disorder which leads to a progressive decline in cognitive functions. A rapid screening model is highly demanded for identification and evaluation of novel anti-Alzheimer’s disease drugs from a large numbers of compounds. Until now, numerous studies utilized zebrafish model for drug discovery. Since aluminum can induce a similar biological activity in zebrafish as in Alzheimer patients, in this study, we developed a novel animal model using 3 to 5 day post-fertilization larval zebrafish by optimizing the doses and duration of aluminum chloride exposure. Six anti-Alzheimer’s disease drugs with a variety of mechanisms were tested to validate the newly developed zebrafish model. Importantly, Rivastigmine, ThT, Flurbiprofen and AM-117 could increase the value of Dyskinesia Recovery Rate by 53.4-64%, 169.4-200%, 54.5-96% and 70.9-121%, respectively. Rivastigmine, Memantine, ThT, Flurbiprofen, Rosiglitazone and AM-117 improved the value of Response Efficiency by 86.6-175.1%, 28.2-66.6%, 127.2-236.5%, 118.3-323.7%, 26.6-140.8% and 70.2-161.4%, respectively. Our results suggest that the zebrafish model developed in this study could be a useful tool for high throughput screening of potential novel anti-Alzheimer’s disease leading compounds targeting acetylcholinesterase, N-methyl-D-aspartic acid receptor, γ-secretase, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ and amyloid-β.