An American biotech company is gearing up to release a beef-flavored longevity pill for dogs that could extend their lives by up to one year – and some scientists think similar drugs could do the same for humans.
The San Francisco-based firm, Loyal, aims to bring the LOY-002 pill to market in early 2025. This daily medication is designed to slow and reverse metabolic changes associated with aging.
More specifically, the pill reduces frailty by suppressing aging-driven increases in insulin, thus reducing the risk of disease, extending health and decreasing the rate of aging.
LOY-002 is currently undergoing a companion dog clinical study, and the company is targeting next year for FDA conditional approval.
But Loyal isn’t the only research group interested in extending the lives of our canine companions. At the Dog Aging Project laboratory at the University of Washington (UW), researchers are testing rapamycin as another canine longevity drug.
Rapamycin is commonly used as an immunosuppressant for humans after organ transplant operations, but it has already shown promise as a longevity drug in mice, increasing lifespan and delaying or reversing many age-related disorders.
The Dog Aging Project suggests low doses of rapamycin could have the same effect in dogs, specifically by regulating cell growth and metabolism to improve heart and cognitive functions. This study aims to extend dogs’ lives by up to three years.
Everyone wants more time with their precious pets. But that’s not the only thing motivating these scientists. They believe this work could eventually translate into human longevity benefits as well.
Researchers are developing new drugs that could extend a dog’s life by one to three years. Eventually, they could be used to improve human longevity too
‘Finding out how to prevent canine age-related decline is a really strong proxy for doing the same with humans because dogs get similar age-related diseases, and share our environments and habits in ways laboratory mice do not,’ Celine Halioua, founder and chief executive of Loyal, told the Guardian.
Loyal has raised $125million in funding from companies that have held back from investing in longevity projects because of how long those trials would take. Dog-based trials, however, move faster due to the animals’ naturally shorter lifespans.
The Dog Aging Project recognizes the link between canine longevity and human longevity, too.
‘If we’re successful with dogs, it could be a turning point in informing us how to give human populations extra healthy lifespan too,’ project co-director and UW biogerontologist Daniel Promislow told the Guardian.
‘Our study is light years ahead of anything that’s been done on humans or can be done on humans,’ he added.
‘What we’re doing is the equivalent of a 40-year-long study on humans, testing the ability of a drug to increase healthy lifespan.’
Promislow and his colleagues believe their research could also have implications for women’s health, specifically pre- and post-menopausal women.
That’s because they split their findings not just by male and female dogs, but also by pre- and post-spaying or surgical sterilization.
‘We also have data on what age dogs have been spayed – which could cross over to the variation in age that women have their menopause – and data on why they were spayed, which could cross over to women who have had hysterectomies for medical reasons,’ Kate Creevy, co-founder and chief veterinary officer of the project, told the Guardian.
Helping dogs live longer, healthier lives benefits human longevity in other ways too. Studies have shown that owning a dog improves human health and reduces risk of death
What’s more, research suggests simply owning a dog can help people live longer, healthier lives — another reason why finding ways to improve canine longevity could benefit human longevity.
A pair of studies published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes suggest that dog ownership is linked to a 21 percent reduction in the risk of death for people with heart disease.
Plus, experts note that having a dog encourages an active lifestyle, as our furry friends require regular, supervised exercise and playtime.
Research has shown that dogs have a positive impact on our mental health, too, by reducing anxiety, promoting social connection and combatting loneliness.
While the early results from the scientists at Loyal and the Dog Aging Project are promising, this growing research field still has a long way to go before the findings can be directly applied to human lives.
The Dog Aging Project is still at least five years away from reporting its results. And at this time, researchers cannot test canine longevity drugs on humans, no matter how positive the results are in dogs, Jamie Justice, professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, told the Guardian.
‘Because we can’t conduct 40-year-long longevity tests on humans, we need a universally agreed biomarker to show the impact of drugs on predictors of health problems that we agree correlate with ageing,’ she said.
But if scientists can agree on those parameters, testing could begin in humans. In the meantime, these researchers will keep working to extend the life of man’s best friend.
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