Gene Therapy That Works in Dogs May Help Cure a Form of Blindness in People

it appears that comparative oncology is not the only field in which medical researchers are discovering that therapies that work on dogs, may also work on humans. Specifically, two Penn researchers demonstrated four years ago, that gene therapy could help restore vision in both dogs and humans for those with a very rare form of blindness.

Now it seems that a similar approach may also work for a much more common form of blindness--retinitis pigmentosa, which affects many thousands. This week, scientists Gustavo Aguirre and William Beltran reported success in treating dogs with the disease by using gene therapy. They are hoping the approach will also work for humans.

The same approach that they used before--injecting healthy genes into the retina to compensate for the malfunctioning ones--was used and stopped the disease in four dogs from progressing. The mutation occurred spontaneously in the dogs--they were born with it, meaning that researchers did not have to destroy a dogs sight in order to test the protocol.

While human trials are not yet underway, hope is high for the success of the vaccine in people as well as pets.