LISBON, PORTUGAL — Scientists in Portugal have demonstrated that zebrafish larvae can be used as avatars for people, in that they can predict the response of human cancer tumors to various drugs. This would enable researchers to choose more efficient treatments for patients.

Scientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon implanted human cancer cells into zebrafish larvae and allowed them to grow.

They then added different chemotherapy drugs to the fish's water and found the fish respond differently to effective and ineffective drugs. The fish avatars are said to have reflected the same responses as four out of five human patients in the study.

Similar experiments have been done on mice, but tumors require at least two months to grow inside mice, whereas in zebrafish it only take about two weeks.

The team plans to conduct the same experiments in hundreds of patients in order to confirm the fish's predictive power, which can be completed in two years.