Abstract: The construction of economical and effective early drug safety assessment technology has become global urgent requirement in drug research and development area. Zebrafish, one of three common model animals, is an ideal drug early safety assessment model. New drug safety assessment with the model can improve reliability and sensitivity of early drug toxicity prediction, reduce new drug research and development period and cost, and improve success rate of drug research and development. We survey the application of zebrafish model in early drug safety assessment, such as general toxicity assessment, growth toxicity assessment, neurotoxicity assessment, organ toxicity assessment, and reproductive toxicity assessment, etc. With the development of biological and medicine technology, zebrafish will play a more important role in early drug safety assessment area, and promote drug research and development process.

Key words: zebrafish, toxicity evaluation, early drug safety assessment