Dogs have long contributed to advances in human medicine. For instance C. Walton Lillehei experimented on dogs to develop his path-breaking human open-heart operations (see the book King of Hearts). What pains me about those dog contributions is that the dogs themselves died in the experiments. In the more recent dog contributions to human medicine, as discussed in the passages quoted below, the dogs themselves have a good chance to benefit as they contribute to human health. I like that a lot better.
(p. A11) In the quest to help people live longer, scientists and companies are turning to dogs.
. . .
Behind the growing enthusiasm is a mix of scientists and entrepreneurs—building on the surging interest from people aiming to live longer. These groups say insights into dog longevity could provide lessons and perhaps eventually treatments that could help people, too.
. . .
On Tuesday [Nov. 28, 2023], a biotech startup that’s hoping to have the first FDA-approved treatment to extend healthy lifespan in dogs, took a step toward that goal. In a letter viewed by The Wall Street Journal, the Food and Drug Administration affirmed that its drug had demonstrated “reasonable expectation of effectiveness.”
The company, called Loyal, still has to complete several more steps before it can market the drug, and it’s only aimed at canines.
. . .
Celine Halioua, chief executive of Loyal, the biotech startup working toward conditional approval of its lifespan drug, says there is a larger aim in addition to helping dogs live healthier for longer. The company has set a possible precedent for other drugs to be approved for lifespan extension, potentially opening a door for other animal—or human—drug companies to follow.
“I think we can both take the opportunity to build better medicines for our dogs and also to better understand these really complex diseases,” says Halioua, whose own 85-pound Rottweiler mix, Della, is nearing the end of her projected lifespan.
The firm’s drug is an injectable that is designed to reduce levels of IGF-1, a hormone that drives cell growth, in large dogs. High blood levels of IGF-1 have been associated with shorter lifespans in some animal and human studies.
The company’s research has indicated that the drug can reduce those hormone levels, but it would still need a large clinical trial demonstrating it can extend dog lifespans in order to achieve full FDA approval. It also needs the agency’s signoff on the drug’s safety and proper manufacturing before getting conditional approval and beginning to sell it, which Loyal hopes to do in 2026.
Still, the FDA nod this week is a promising next step for the field, dog aging researchers say, and will likely drive more interest from biotech and pharmaceutical companies.
“If it is proven that the drug is effective in dogs then there is a higher chance that it will work in the case of humans, too,” says Eniko Kubinyi, a biologist studying dog behavior and cognition with the Budapest-based Family Dog Project.
For the full story see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 29, 2023 [sic], and has the title “The Clues to Longer Life That Are Coming From Dogs.” The last four paragraphs quoted above appeared in the more detailed online version, but not the print version, of the article. Some of the earlier quoted sentences are quoted in the longer form that appeared in the online version.)
The biography of Lillehei mentioned in my opening comments above is:
Miller, G. Wayne. King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery. New York: Crown, 2000.