PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Colin D Paul
AU  - Alexus Devine
AU  - Kevin Bishop
AU  - Qing Xu
AU  - Kathryn M Daly
AU  - Chaunte Lewis
AU  - Daniel S Green
AU  - Jack R Staunton
AU  - Swati Choksi
AU  - Zheng-Gang Liu
AU  - Raman Sood
AU  - Kandice Tanner
TI  - Human macrophages survive and adopt activated genotypes in living zebrafish
AID  - 10.1101/181685
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 181685
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/08/29/181685.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/08/29/181685.full
AB  - The inflammatory response, modulated both by tissue resident macrophages and recruited monocytes from peripheral blood, plays a critical role in human diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Here we sought a model to interrogate human immune behavior in vivo. We determined that primary human monocytes and macrophages survive in zebrafish for up to two weeks. Flow cytometry revealed that human monocytes cultured at the physiological temperature of the zebrafish survive and differentiate, comparable to cohorts cultured at human physiological temperature. Human cells migrated within multiple tissues at speeds comparable to zebrafish macrophages. Analysis of gene expression of in vivo educated human macrophages confirmed expression of activated macrophage phenotypes. Here, human cells adopted phenotypes relevant to cancer progression, suggesting that we can define the real time immune modulation of human tumor cells during the establishment of a metastatic lesion in zebrafish.