6. Non-mammalian animal models

6.1 Zebrafish (Danio rerio), a model for studying cancer cell dissemination

As mentioned above, carcinogenesis is a sequential process comprising an initiation stage, a promotion stage and a tumor progression stage. However, 90% of cancer deaths are linked to this 3rd stage, known as the dissemination of certain cells from the tumor mass, leading to the formation of metastases. Studying this final phase is a major challenge for mechanistic toxicology, in order to better understand the impact of genotoxic carcinogenic pollutants and, above all, less well-studied non-genotoxic pollutants. Several in vitro models can be proposed, with studies on the ability of xenobiotics to promote epithelial-mesenchymal transition, cell migration and invasion. However, in vitro models are unable to...