Help A Heart

NEW STUDY! Funded jointly by Morris Animal Foundation and the Newfoundland Club of America Charitable Trust, the study hopes to shed light on the genetics underlying subvalvular aortic stenosis (SAS) in Newfoundland dogs.

Specifically, the research will employ advanced tools to discover genetic determinants of the disease in the breed. If successful, findings could be used to genetically screen dogs for this disease and inform breeding decisions.

“SAS is a devastating and puzzling disease—devastating for the dogs and their families and puzzling for the geneticists,” says principal investigator Vilma Yuzbasiyan-Gurkan, PhD, a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and small animal clinical sciences at Michigan State University. “We hope our cutting-edge genetics and genomics approaches will provide some clear and useful answers and reveal the genetic basis of this disorder.”