Zebrafish Screen Finds Transplant-Boosting Compound

Because blood stem cell transplants require chemotherapy that knocks out a patient’s immune system, the procedures can be dangerous. Now, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have developed a new screening method using zebrafish to find small molecules that can improve the speed and efficiency at which these transplants engraft, or “take,” to their host (Nature 2015, DOI: 10.1038/nature14569). The group, led by Pulin Li, Jamie L. Lahvic, and Vera Binder in Leonard I. Zon’s laboratory, created two kinds of donor fish. They tagged one fish’s blood cells with DsRed-Express florescent protein (DsRed2) and the other fish’s blood cells with green fluorescent protein (GFP). After treating the GFP-labeled fish tissue with a compound of interest, they transplanted equal amounts of kidney marrow from both fish into a third transparent fish. The ratio of cells expressing GFP versus DsRed2 allows observers to determine visually if the compound of interest gave engraftment an edge. The researchers screened 480 compounds. Among the hits was 11,12-epoxyeicosatrienoic acid, which also aided engraftment in mice.