Recent in vitro studies have demonstrated that extract of soft coralDendronephthya gigantea(SCDE) had stronganti-inflammatory activities. However, the direct effects of SCDE on anti-inflammatory activities in vivo modelremained to be determined. Therefore, the present study was designed to assess in vivo anti-inflammatoryeffect of SCDE using lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated zebrafish model. We also investigated whether SCDEhas toxic effects in zebrafish model. The survival, heart beat rate, and developmental abnormalities were nosignificant change in the zebrafish embryos exposed to at a concentration below 100μg/ml of SCDE. However, lethaltoxicity was caused after exposure to 200 and 400μg/ml of SCDE. Treating zebrafish model with LPS treatment significantly increased the reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric oxide (NO) generation. However, SCDE inhibited this LPS-stimulated ROS and NO generation in a dose-dependent manner. These results show that SCDE alleviated inflammation by inhibiting the ROS and NO generation induced by LPS treatment. In addition, SCDEhas a protective effect against the cell damage induced by LPS exposure in zebrafish embryos. This outcome couldexplain the profound anti-inflammatory effect of SCDE both in vitro as well as in vivo, suggesting that the SCDE mightbe a strong anti-inflammatory agent.

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• Developmental toxicity and anti-inflammatory effect of the soft coral Dendronephthya gigantea collected from Jeju Island in zebrafish model