A mutated gene in dogs could help treat human blindness, according to a new study.
Finnish-North American team of researchers discovered that a MERTK gene defect was responsible for a recently identified form of progressive retinal atrophy in Swedish vallhund dogs, according to a news release. Retinal diseases are a leading form of blindness in both humans and dogs, so the researchers believe this finding could help develop the therapies used to treat blindness in both dogs and humans.
"The dog has a retina very similar to ours, much more so than mice, so when you want to bring a visual therapy to the clinic, you want to first show that it works in a large animal model of the disease," Professor Ehud Isacoff, lead research from the University of California, Berkeley, said to Mail Online.
"We've now showed that we can deliver the photoswitch and restore light response to the blind retina in the dog as well as in the mouse, and that the treatment has the same sensitivity and speed of response. We can reanimate the dog retina."
The collaborating research teams examined 324 dogs in seven countries located on three different continents.
The study began in the 1990s when Swedish and Finnish eye panelists found a new retinal disease in Swedish vallhund dogs. This retinal abnormality was different from any other retinal disease in dogs that they had ever seen before, according to the release.
"I drove from Philadelphia to Michigan to examine the affected dogs, and began visiting dog shows and other venues around North America and Scandinavia to examine other Swedish vallhund dogs. It is wonderful to see that these trips helped us to later get this far to understand these conditions," Dr. András Komáromy, a researcher in the study from the University of Michigan, said in the release.
The research teams plan to continue studying the mutated gene in the future, looking at the overexpression-related disease mechanisms with a possibility for a therapeutic option with MERTK inhibitors, according to the release.