Suitable animal models with high throughput are required to investigate the integrating and regulating effects of active constituents of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM). The zebrafish model has become an ideal research model for the diseases of various human systems due to its unique features, such as small body size, strong reproductive capacity, in vitro development, and high homology with human beings, and has been increasingly studied and applied in the field of TCM pharmacological effects. Here we reviewed recent published papers of zebrafish-based multimodal studies, focusing on the pharmacological effects of TCM. The applications of zebrafish model in studies of human diseases were systematically summarized, including angiogenesis, inflammation, neurobehavior changes, heart injury, osteoporosis, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and tumors. The advantages and major findings of zebrafish models in multimodal TCM studies were discussed. In addition, we anticipated the use of immunohistochemistry, fluorescent probes and transgenic fish lines to dynamically observe and quantitatively analyze the endogenous changes of target organs or cells in the zebrafish model, so as to realize the multimodal identification of active compositions of TCM, and further explore the mechanism of active compositions of TCM by considering the detected expression levels of biomarkers.
Keywords: multimodal research; pharmacological effects; traditional Chinese medicine; zebrafish.