Quantitative live imaging reveals region-dependent medulloblastoma disseminationin the zebrafish brain

Orthotopic xenografts of human medulloblastoma ONS-76 in larval zebrafish show hindbrain-to-cerebellum dissemination in 81.5% of larvae, over fourfold versus forebrain or midbrain tumors.

• Why it matters: Early in vivo dissemination dynamics that drive CNS relapse are hard to measure directly, limiting how well therapies can be evaluated during initial spread.
• What they did: Human medulloblastoma cells were transplanted into larval zebrafish brains and tracked longitudinally by high-resolution confocal imaging, with quantitative metrics including tumor area, perimeter, compactness, convex hull area, and fractal dimension.
• The result: Dasatinib decreased tumor expansion and dissemination-associated features in a concentration-dependent manner, while higher doses caused host toxicity, enabling in vivo testing of dissemination and therapeutic response.

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