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» Go to news mainHow zebrafish are changing the way doctors treat Maritime children with cancer
Posted by Carolyn Ray on
September 20, 2018
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Dr. Jason Berman's zebrafish lab in the Life Science Research Institute (LSRI).
Inside a lab at Dalhousie Medical School, 12,000 zebrafish swim in tanks that line the room from floor to ceiling.
It looks like a pet store or an aquarium, but these guppy-sized fish have an important connection to children being treated across the street at the IWK Health Centre: they share the same cancers.
"That may seem a little science fiction," says Dr. Jason Berman, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the Halifax hospital. "Remarkably, these little fish are genetically very similar to humans.
"And that's really important when we're studying cancer, because cancer is really a genetic disease."
Read more on CBC.ca.
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