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.”

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