A novel goldfish orthotopic xenograft model of hepatocellular carcinoma developed to evaluate antitumor drug efficacy.

Tumor xenograft animal models play a crucial role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) research. Mice xenograft models are time consuming, laborious and expensive while zebrafish tumor xenograft models are cost-effective and effortless. However, the development of orthotopic xenograft models for HCC in zebrafish embryos has been challenging due to the small size of zebrafish livers.