The Thumbay Research Institute for Precision Medicine (TRIPM) at GMU inaugurated the Zebrafish Facility on 23 November 2021. Chief guests from the Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences and New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) attended the ceremony. His Excellency Abdulla Bin Souqat, Executive Director of the Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences, Prof. Hossam Hamdy, Chancellor of GMU, Prof Salem Chouaib, Vice Chancellor for Research, Prof Manda Venkatraman, Vice Chancellor Academics, and other Vice-Chancellors, Deans, Dr. Bhavani Madakashira Pranesh (Postdoctoral Associate, NYUAD) and Faculty members were among the attendees.
This facility is the second zebrafish facility in the United Arab Emirates, it has a 6-shelf stand alone system that can house ~108 tanks and up to 400 fishes. The facility also includes a state-of-the-art microinjection station with microinjector, manipulator, stereomicroscope and fluorescent microscope.
This facility is important for quality research as zebrafish has emerged as GMU a versatile tool for modeling many human diseases, especially cancer. Zebrafish are easy and inexpensive to breed and maintain in a lab environment. This animal model is superior to other models and is unique due to its transparency in the early stages of development. This allows for easy genetic manipulation and even transplantation of human cancer cells to better study cancer behavior in real-time. This animal model has gained traction in the fields of cancer biology, drug discovery, and immunotherapy. This facility will be instrumental in carrying out challenging and advanced research projects at GMU.