Correlation of pharmacokinetics and brain penetration data of adult zebrafish with higher mammals including humans.

Introduction: Adult zebrafish pharmacology is evolving rapidly for creating efficacy and safety models for drug discovery. However, there is very limited research in understanding pharmacokinetics (PK) in adult zebrafish. Methods for understanding PK will help in conducting pharmacokinetic - pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) correlations and improving the quality and applicability of data obtained using zebrafish.

Oral dosing in adult zebrafish: proof-of-concept using pharmacokinetics and pharmacological evaluation of carbamazepine.

Background And Methods: We describe a method for obtaining pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacology data from adult zebrafish in terms of mg/kg using a novel method of oral administration. Using carbamazepine (CBZ) as a test drug, we employed dried blood spot (DBS) cards to enable drug quantification for PK; and we evaluated the pharmacological anxiolytic effect using novel tank test.

Results: The PK study confirmed the presence of CBZ in both blood and brain and the behavioural study showed dose dependent anxiolytic effect.