Researchers are exploring longevity drugs in dogs that could also help extend human lifespans. An American start-up is developing a pill that could give dogs an extra year of healthy life.
The drug could extend the life of dogs by a year PHOTO Archive
Early next year, Loyal, a US biotech start-up, is confident of bringing LOY-002, a beef-based pill to market that could give dogs at least an extra year of healthy life, according to The Guardian.
The San Francisco-based company has raised $125 million in funding from firms that have shied away from investing in human longevity projects because of the decades these tests would take.
But Celine Halioua, founder and chief executive of Loyal — which is part of Cellular Longevity, a biotech firm researching the science of longevity — believes their work will also benefit humans.
“Finding out how to prevent age-related decline in dogs is a good substitute for doing the same in humans, because dogs develop similar age-related diseases and share environments and habits with us in ways that laboratory mice do not.”she said.
Potential benefits
The LOY-002 pill aims to mitigate and reverse the metabolic changes associated with aging: reducing frailty by stopping age-related increases in insulin.
“We don’t make dogs immortal”Halioua said. “The way the drug extends lifespan, we assume, is by extending health and thus shortening the rate of aging.”
The same goal is being pursued in another laboratory, nearly 900 miles away, where a team of academic researchers is testing the impact of rapamycin on aging dogs
Rapamycin, an inexpensive and easy-to-produce drug already commonly used as an immunosuppressant for humans after organ transplants, has been repeatedly shown to extend lifespan and delay—or even reverse—many age-related conditions in mice.
“Best Hope”
Although the drug has not been approved for longevity use in humans, many gerontologists still consider it “best hope” that we have to pharmacologically slow down the aging process.
The Canine Anti-Aging Project suggests that low doses of rapamycin could extend the lifespan of dogs by improving both cardiac and cognitive functions by regulating cell growth and metabolism.
“Our study is decades ahead of anything that has been done in humans or can be done in humans”said Daniel Promislow, a biogerontologist at the University of Washington and co-director of the project. “What we’re doing is the equivalent of a 40-year human study testing a drug’s ability to increase healthy lifespan.”
