Scientists are investigating longevity drugs for dogs that could also extend human life

It is not without reason that dogs are called man’s best friend: they are good for the mental and physical health of their owners some studies have shown this that if you are looking for a date and want to appear more attractive, it might be time to find a canine companion.

So what if dogs could live forever – and what if that secret could help their owners live longer, healthier lives?

A number of companies are now finding common ground between the two objectives.

Early next year, Loyal, an American biotech start-upis confident it will commercialize LOY-002, a daily beef-flavored pill that can give dogs at least one extra year of healthy life.

The San Francisco-based company has raised $125 million (£100 million) in funding from companies that have refrained from investing in human lifespan projects because of the decades those tests would take.

But Celine Halioua, founder and CEO of Loyal – part of Cellular Longevity, a biotech company researching the science of longevity – believes their work will benefit people.

“Finding out how to prevent age-related decline in dogs is a very strong indication to do the same with humans, because dogs develop similar age-related diseases and share our environment and habits in a way that laboratory mice do not,” she said.

The LOY-002 pill aims to attenuate and reverse the metabolic changes associated with aging: reducing frailty by reducing the aging-related increase in insulin.

“We don’t make immortal dogs,” Halioua said. “The way the drug extends lifespan, we hypothesize, is by extending health and thereby shortening the rate of aging.”

The same goal is being pursued in another laboratory, almost 1,500 kilometers away in America, where a team of academic researchers is feverishly testing the impact of rapamycin as part of the Dog Aging Project.

Rapamycin, a cheap, easy-to-produce drug already commonly used as an immunosuppressant in humans after organ transplants, has been repeatedly shown to extend lifespan and slow or even reverse many age-related conditions in mice.

Although the drug is not approved for long-term use in humans, many gerontologists nevertheless consider it the best hope we have for pharmacologically slowing the aging process.

The Dog Aging Project, the first large-scale, longitudinal study of large animals in a natural environment, suggests that low doses of rapamycin can extend the lifespan of dogs, improving both their cardiac and cognitive functions by regulating cell growth and metabolism .

“Our study is light years ahead of anything that has been done on humans or can be done on humans,” said Daniel Promislow, a biogerontologist at the University of Washington and co-director of the project. “What we are doing is the equivalent of a 40-year human study, testing a drug’s ability to extend healthy lifespan.”

Kate Creevy, co-founder and chief veterinary officer of the project, said they were in the unique position of being able to divide their findings not only between male and female dogs, but also between pre- and post-sterilisation, or surgical sterilisation.

“This means that our research could have interesting translational implications for women before and after menopause,” Creevy said. “We also have data on the age at which dogs are sterilized – which could carry over to the variation in age at which women have their menopause – and data on why they were sterilized, which could carry over to women who have had a hysterectomy for medical reasons. ”

When the project finally reports in four to five years, Promislow hopes to prove that rapamycin has the power to give dogs an extra three years of healthy life.

Promislow emphasizes that it is realistic to hope that his research can also be transferred to people. “If we are successful with dogs, this could be a turning point in informing us how we can give human populations additional healthy lifespans,” he said.

The quest to extend the lives of dogs is warmly welcomed in the human longevity community.

Prof. Tom Rando, director of the University of California’s Broad Stem Cell Research Center and one of the most respected names in the geroscience community, said the research is “fascinating.”

“The work is one more piece in the puzzle that we hope will eventually give us a complete picture of the human lifespan,” he said.

“The more human-like the animal we can test our longevity drugs on, the more confident we can be that these drugs will work in humans,” he said. “And having evidence of efficacy and safety in dogs gives us more confidence to conduct human studies with the same drugs.”

But Jamie Justice, an adjunct professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said that without consensus among scientists on a human biomarker for aging in the form of a simple blood test, scientists cannot test any drug in humans. anyway. how positive the results are elsewhere.

“Because we cannot perform 40-year longevity tests on humans, we need a universally accepted biomarker to demonstrate the impact of drugs on predictors of health problems that we agree are associated with aging,” she said.

“The goal of science now must be to agree on these parameters. Then the work can begin that will produce the most exciting results of all – because they will be results that we can bring to market.”