Non-mammalian vertebrate embryos as models in nanomedicine

Unfortunately, the most commonly used vertebrate animal models (rodents, dog, sheep, pigs) for studying the interactions of nanomaterials with biological systems are costly and labor intensive and such studies raise important ethical issues. An alternative solution is to replace the use of mammals with non-mammalian embryo models (zebrafish, Xenopus, chicken) whenever possible, or to introduce the non-mammalian testing to prioritize in-vivo testing on mammals. The results reported in literature indicate that non-mammalian vertebrate embryos are reliable models as mammals to assess interactions with nanomaterials.130