An inducible transgene reports activation of macrophages in live zebrafish larvae.

Macrophages are the most functionally heterogenous cells of the hematopoietic system. Given many diseases are underpinned by inappropriate macrophage activation, macrophages have emerged as a therapeutic target to treat disease. A thorough understanding of what controls macrophage activation will likely reveal new pathways that can be manipulated for therapeutic benefit. Live imaging fluorescent macrophages within transgenic zebrafish larvae has provided a valuable window to investigate macrophage behavior in vivo. Here we describe the first transgenic zebrafish line that reports macrophage activation, as evidenced by induced expression of an immunoresponsive gene 1(irg1):EGFP transgene. When combined with existing reporter lines that constitutively mark macrophages, we reveal this unique transgenic line can be used to live image macrophage activation in response to the bacterial endotoxin lipopolysaccharide and xenografted human cancer cells. We anticipate the Tg(irg1:EGFP) line will provide a valuable tool to explore macrophage activation and plasticity in the context of different disease models.

Repositioning drugs for inflammatory disease - fishing for new anti-inflammatory agents.

Inflammation is an important and appropriate host response to infection or injury. However, dysregulation of this response, with resulting persistent or inappropriate inflammation, underlies a broad range of pathological processes, from inflammatory dermatoses to type 2 diabetes and cancer. As such, identifying new drugs to suppress inflammation is an area of intense interest. Despite notable successes, there still exists an unmet need for new effective therapeutic approaches to treat inflammation. Traditional drug discovery, including structure-based drug design, have largely fallen short of satisfying this unmet need. With faster development times and reduced safety and pharmacokinetic uncertainty, drug repositioning - the process of finding new uses for existing drugs - is emerging as an alternative strategy to traditional drug design that promises an improved risk-reward trade-off. Using a zebrafish in vivo neutrophil migration assay, we undertook a drug repositioning screen to identify unknown anti-inflammatory activities for known drugs. By interrogating a library of 1280 approved drugs for their ability to suppress the recruitment of neutrophils to tail fin injury, we identified a number of drugs with significant anti-inflammatory activity that have not previously been characterized as general anti-inflammatories. Importantly, we reveal that the ten most potent repositioned drugs from our zebrafish screen displayed conserved anti-inflammatory activity in a mouse model of skin inflammation (atopic dermatitis). This study provides compelling evidence that exploiting the zebrafish as an in vivo drug repositioning platform holds promise as a strategy to reveal new anti-inflammatory activities for existing drugs.