Just when you thought puppies couldn’t get any cuter, this video appears in your twitter feed.

These adorable English bulldog puppies are named Darla and Spanky, and they were born with a birth defect called spina bifida where the bones and tissue surrounding the spinal cord fail to fuse completely. Spina bifida occurs in 1500-2000 children in the US each year and can cause serious problems such as paralysis and issues with walking, cognition, and bladder or bowel control. Dogs born with this condition usually cannot use their hind legs, and as a sad consequence, are typically put down at a young age.

Cutting edge research from UC Davis is now giving these unfortunate puppies hope. Diana Farmer, a fetal surgeon at UC Davis Health, and scientists from the university’s Veterinary Institute for Regenerative Cures have developed a combination surgery and stem cell transplant, using placenta-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (PMSCs), to treat puppies with spina bifida. Because prenatal screening for spina bifida is not done in dogs, Darla and Spanky received the treatment when they were ten weeks old.

With funding from a CIRM preclinical development award, Farmer has done similar surgeries in lambs that are still in the womb. A UC Davis news release provided historical background on Farmer’s work on spina bifida,

“Farmer pioneered the use of surgery prior to birth to improve brain development in children with spina bifida. She later showed that prenatal surgery combined with human placenta-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (PMSCs), held in place with a cellular scaffold, helped research lambs born with the disorder walk without noticeable disability.”

As you can see from the video, the surgeries were a success. Darla and Spanky are now able to live up to their full puppy potential and will live happily ever after with their adoptive family in New Mexico.

Looking forward, Farmer and her team would like to treat more dogs with spina bifida so they can improve another negative consequence of spina bifida called incontinence, or an uncontrollable bladder. The UC Davis release explained that, “while Darla and Spanky are very mobile and doing well on their feet, they still require diapers.” (Side note: this video proves that puppies can make anything look cute, even dirty diapers.)

Additionally, the team is hoping to receive regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to launch a clinical trial testing this therapy in humans. If this stem cell treatment proves to be both safe and effective in clinical trials, it could potentially prevent spina bifida from ever happening in animals and in humans.

English Bulldog undergoing spina bifida surgery at UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. (Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis)