Seven puppies were born on July 10, five beagles and two beagle-cocker spaniel mixes. One would wonder why that would be big news. Well, the litter of seven fur balls is the first ever litter of In Vitro Vertilization (IVF) pups born anywhere in the world.
The puppies were conceived from IVF embryos and were delivered through Cesarean section in July. The dog that gave birth to the litter was a beagle. Sperm from a cocker spaniel and eggs from a different beagle were used in conceiving two of the pups. Genetic material from beagles helped in the conception of the other pups of the litter.
The scientists behind the breakthrough described the Cornell litter as "the first live births from in vitro fertilized embryos in the dog." Jennifer Nagashima, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute doctoral fellow and lead author of the study, said IVF technology in dogs could eventually be applicable to "models for human disease" as well.
The research team hopes to use the technology not only for breeding dogs, but to save endangered species of dogs and prevent genetic diseases in the animals, instead of curing them.
"There's currently five species of dog that are threatened with extinction. So by doing this now in a domestic dog, what we're doing is creating a platform or starting place to now expand this technique to be used for all these other species of dog. It may not turn out to be exactly the same, but it gives us a really good starting point," Alexander Travis, an associate professor of reproductive biology who helped lead the work, told NBC News.
Travis, the head of the laboratory at Cornell's Baker Institute for Animal Health, said that scientists have been trying to do IVF with dogs since the 1970s and have not been successful, until now "Instead of trying to cure disease, we can help prevent it from happening in the first place," he said, according to Reuters.
"The biology of the dog is really, really different than humans," said Dr. Pierre Comizzoli, a reproductive physiologist for the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va., explaining that while pregnancies in dogs last only two months, the females go into heat just once or twice a year, making the process more difficult, reported the Associated Press.
The research team published their work in the Dec. 9 issue of the journal PLOS ONE.
