Supported by the National Basic Research and Development Program of China (973 Program), the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China and Western Light Talents Training Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and with the help of North Service Center of National Zebrafish Resource Pool, the Zebrafish Research Platform has been established in Key Laboratory for Heavy Ion Radiation Biomedicine (HIRB) of CAS.

Zebrafish is a new animal model and its whole genome has been worked out. The result shows that its homology with the genome of human race is up to 85%. So far a large number of zebrafish mutants obtained can be used to carry out different kinds of researches. Zebrafish has high reproducibility and its embryo develops in vitro, so it is easy to observe and control its embryonic development. Zebrafish which has been widely applied to developmental biology, toxicology and new drug screening has drawn the most attention from many fields in recent years.

The research group of radiation biomedicine, by using zebrafish embryos, filtered the radioprotective effects of several hundred natural products. They have found that dozens of compounds have obvious radioprotective effect upon death, growth retardation and deformity of embryos caused by X-ray and carbon irons radiation. The group will further use Zebrafish Research Platform to study validity and security of heavy-ion cancer therapy, thus rooting for its clinic application and popularity.