Scientists who study aging are howling about the possible demise of one of the field’s biggest studies, the Dog Aging Project. The effort has been probing cognitive and physical aspects of aging in about 50,000 dogs and is running a clinical trial to test a drug that may boost their longevity. But organizers say the project will probably lose funding this year from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), which has furnished at least 90% of its annual budget, now about $7 million.
“It is a big loss if this project in dogs does not continue,” says gerontologist João Pedro de Magalhães of the University of Birmingham, who notes that large, long-lived animal models promise valuable insights into human aging. “It was going to be the most informative study of aging that was not done in humans,” says biogerontologist Steve Austad of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. (Neither scientist has a role in the research, but Austad’s 2-year-old dachshund is a participant.)
Organizers are pessimistic about continued funding because the project received marginal scores on its grant renewal application late last year. They are striving to raise money from other sources and have launched a petition drive to convince the director of the National Institutes of Health to intervene to restore funding. “I’m doing everything possible to keep [the project] going in its current form,” says co-director Daniel Promislow, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Washington (UW).
Although longevity labs teem with rodents and other small animals, “Dogs are probably the most powerful model for studying the biology of aging,” says project co-director Matt Kaeberlein, a former UW geroscientist who is now CEO of the Seattle-based biotech Optispan. Thanks to decades of veterinary research, scientists know more about how health changes over time in dogs than they do in rodents. And unlike lab-dwelling rodents, dogs are exposed to the same environments as we are, and they develop many of the same age-related ailments, including heart disease and dementia. “It’s remarkable how much dog aging is teaching us about human aging,” says biochemist and geneticist Laura Niedernhofer of the University of Minnesota, who isn’t connected to the project.
Other researchers and companies have joined the pack. The Vaika Project tracked the health of a group of 103 retired sled dogs for 5 years until it shut down, and the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study is still following more than 3000 members of that breed. Several companies are also developing therapies to slow aging in dogs, and one, San Francisco–based Loyal, has received a preliminary Food and Drug Administration endorsement for its drug—although the company has not revealed what’s in the treatment.
The Dog Aging Project began in 2014, but research didn’t start in earnest until 2018, when the effort received a 5-year grant for nearly $29 million from NIA. Dog owners fill out annual questionnaires on their pets’ health to chart the animals’ physical deterioration. Some dogs get a closer look, furnishing DNA and other samples and going through tests of mobility and cognition. So far, scientists have sequenced the genomes of 1000 dogs and cached 14,000 tissue samples. Published studies have tracked dogs’ cognitive decline, gauged their susceptibility to tumors, and investigated how their eating schedules affected their health, among other topics. A clinical trial is also underway to test whether the drug rapamycin, which extends life in rodents, also helps dogs live longer. “The project is really just beginning to hit its stride,” says its chief veterinary officer, Kate Creevy of Texas A&M University.
Kaeberlein says that, despite the disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, the project’s organizers thought they had achieved enough for NIA to approve a renewal of their grant. But, “The reviewer score wasn’t as positive as we had hoped for,” Promislow says, almost certainly putting it outside the cutoff for funding. Although the agency hasn’t announced the grant recipients for this cycle, “It’s very unlikely that NIA will be able to fund us this cycle,” he says. An NIA press representative said the agency does not comment on grant deliberations.
Dog geneticist Heather Huson of Cornell University, who isn’t connected to the study, says such projects need long-term support. “It takes you 5 years to start accumulating data.” She knows the challenges firsthand because she took part in the Vaika Project before it shut down last year. The project was a casualty of the war between Russia and Ukraine, because philanthropies in Russia provided much of the money, Huson says.
To avoid that fate, the leaders of the Dog Aging Project are trying to raise money from other sources to tide the project over for the next year, and they plan to reapply for NIA funding in 2025. Promislow and the other organizers are also creating a charitable foundation and hope to raise $40 million to $50 million for an endowment that would ensure continued funding.
The Vaika Project also tried to coax donors to open their wallets for dog aging research but failed, Huson cautions. Yet she and others are hoping the larger project—which has suddenly become an underdog—can be rescued.
PHOTO (COLOR): The Dog Aging Project’s chief veterinary officer, Kate Creevy (foreground), examines a dog.
By Mitch Leslie
