When we think about extending life, we tend to selfishly focus on human life. What new medical advancement or technology will ensure that a person alive today will live to be 200 years old? We don’t often think of longevity in terms of animals—not even man’s best friend, the dog. That’s about to change, though. Researchers are exploring drugs to prolong the lives of dogs, an advancement that could one day benefit humans, too.
Loyal is a biotech startup currently testing a pill called LOY–002. It’s a medication designed to extend a dog’s life by at least one year by fending off age-related metabolic changes like insulin resistance. The pill, should it prove successful, will not ensure immortality but rather extend a dog’s life by slowing the aging process.
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Humans happen to share a lot of the same age-related diseases as dogs, and since they inhabit a lot of the same environments we do and share a lot of our same habits since our lives are so intertwined, a lot of the research going into extending a dog’s life could, in theory, be applied to a human version of this same pill some time down the line.
“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,” said Celine Halioua, founder and chief executive of Loyal, per The Guardian.
Meanwhile, a whole different team of researchers with the University of Washington-based Dog Aging Project is testing out the effects of an immunosuppressant drug called rapamycin, which is known to increase the lifespan of laboratory mice.
The project is still at least half a decade away from reporting its results. Researchers who have spoken to the media about their work, however, say the results have been promising thus far, and have indicated that their research may also one day be applied to extending human lives.
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