Researchers from UPenn‘s School of Veterinary Medicine learned that dogs could develop a form of inherited night blindness. They’re working to reverse it.
Dogs with CSNB that received a single injection of the gene therapy began to express the healthy LRIT3 protein in their retinas and were able to ably navigate a maze in dim light. The treatment also appears lasting, with a sustained therapeutic effect lasting a year or longer.
“The results of this pilot study are very promising,” says Keiko Miyadera, lead author on the study and an assistant professor at Penn Vet. “In people and dogs with congenital stationary night blindness, the severity of disease is consistent and unchanged throughout their lives. And we were able to treat these dogs as adults, between 1 and 3 years of age. That makes these findings promising and relevant to the human patient population, as we could theoretically intervene even in adulthood and see an improvement in night vision.”
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
