Scientists Explore Longevity Drugs For Dogs That Could Also 'Extend Human Life' (theguardian.com) 78
U.S. biotech startup Loyal plans to launch a lifespan-extending drug for dogs in early 2025, potentially offering insights into human longevity. The San Francisco-based company has secured $125 million in funding for LOY-002, a beef-flavored daily pill designed to extend canine lifespans by at least one year. The drug works by targeting age-related metabolic changes and insulin regulation, according to Loyal CEO Celine Halioua.
Simultaneously, the Dog Aging Project is studying rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug, which preliminary research suggests could add three years to dogs' lives. Researchers believe these canine studies could accelerate human longevity research, though experts note the lack of standardized aging biomarkers remains a significant hurdle for human trials.
Simultaneously, the Dog Aging Project is studying rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug, which preliminary research suggests could add three years to dogs' lives. Researchers believe these canine studies could accelerate human longevity research, though experts note the lack of standardized aging biomarkers remains a significant hurdle for human trials.
OK (Score:3)
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I rather expect that's the point - you can't, so you can't sue.
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Yeah, I have no idea how they would determine the pill is actually doing anything. There are TONS of factors that can/will affect how long an animal will live. How are they going to control for all of them? It would require a HUGE population being tested over a very long time, and independently repeated several times, and even then be suspect. Even if the average were longer, what if it had negative side effects that made some animals' lives shorter or lower-quality while not affecting the average enoug
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People who conduct clinical trials on drugs are aware of all of these factors. Without looking further than TFS, I would assume they have been considered. But this is a medication for dogs (not humans) so at this point, maybe the standards to overcome before going on the market are less rigorous.
The work done on Rapamycin by the Dog Aging Project appears to be doing such trials. From TFA:
The Dog Aging Project, the first large-scale, longitudinal study of large animals in a natural environment, suggests that low doses of rapamycin could increase dogs’ lifespan, improving both their heart and cognitive functions by regulating cell growth and metabolism.
“Our study is light years ahead of anything that’s been done on humans or can be done on humans,” said Daniel Promislow, a biogerontologist at the University of Washington and a co-director of the project. “What we’re doing is the equivalent of a 40-year-long study on humans, testing the ability of a drug to increase healthy lifespan.”
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Google is telling me the trials are "expected to last 4 years", implying they have not been completed. I would expect a good trial to take 15-20 years.
Re:OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is telling me the trials are "expected to last 4 years", implying they have not been completed. I would expect a good trial to take 15-20 years.
Maybe not for dogs? Their metabolisms run more quickly.
Lots of drug studies are conducted on animals prior to human trials. They don't take 15-20 years.
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I know "lots of studies" are conducted with this or that methodology. That's why I specified good studies.
Maybe the drug will work if you start dosing it in the last 4 years of a dog's life. Maybe it's only effective if taken on a lifelong basis. You'd never know without a longer study.
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Longer studies produce more answers. That doesn't mean shorter (good) studies can't produce any answers.
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People who conduct clinical trials on drugs are aware of all of these factors. Without looking further than TFS, I would assume they have been considered. But this is a medication for dogs (not humans) so at this point, maybe the standards to overcome before going on the market are less rigorous.
The work done on Rapamycin by the Dog Aging Project appears to be doing such trials. From TFA:
The Dog Aging Project, the first large-scale, longitudinal study of large animals in a natural environment, suggests that low doses of rapamycin could increase dogs’ lifespan, improving both their heart and cognitive functions by regulating cell growth and metabolism.
“Our study is light years ahead of anything that’s been done on humans or can be done on humans,” said Daniel Promislow, a biogerontologist at the University of Washington and a co-director of the project. “What we’re doing is the equivalent of a 40-year-long study on humans, testing the ability of a drug to increase healthy lifespan.”
Rapamycin (and some related compounds) are already showing some anecdotal promise in humans, too. . .
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Re:OK (Score:5, Insightful)
There are chemical changes that take place as ANY creature ages. In humans, it seems to be in the mid-40s and mid-60s where these major changes take place. Now, if by taking these drugs it prevents hip and leg mobility issues as a dog gets older, those are things that will clearly be an improvement, no matter if it changes how long the dog lives. Quality of live improvements are important.
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There are chemical changes that take place as ANY creature ages. In humans, it seems to be in the mid-40s and mid-60s where these major changes take place.
That was the report of a single study that the Media found clickbait-worthy. It would be unwise to accept it as an article of faith.
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How do I know it was 13 years of this expensive pill that allowed for this extra year?
Confirmation bias?
You could try using science (Score:2)
Or at leadt try not assuming you're smarter than everyone else.
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If you are a rich asshole, you may pay for it just on the possibility. And for your own life. Rich assholes are generally not very smart people.
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Get 2 dogs, and only give one of them the pill.
Re: OK (Score:1)
DOGE (Score:5, Interesting)
Time Travel Too? (Score:5, Funny)
"U.S. biotech startup Loyal plans to launch a lifespan-extending drug for dogs in early 2024". Looks like they've already been successful and the secret is time travel.
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You beat me to it, and I just noticed after posting below.
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lazarus, maybe you're taking the drug?
On the... upside? (Score:5, Funny)
You'll also have a strong desire to chase balls and squirrels and walk around in a circle before lying down.
Re:On the... upside? (Score:5, Funny)
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If it would allow me to lick my balls, they'll have a guaranteed customer.
Before or after you're neutered? 'Cause in the latter, you can also play fetch w/them.
Re:On the... upside? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: On the... upside? (Score:3)
They make them for humans too. I know someone who lost a testicle in a bicycling accident as a child. Got to take his word for it that he has a plastic nut, though
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The pill will be administered to people by hiding it in some hamburger.
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The pill will be administered to people by hiding it in some hamburger.
Ha! Nice.
That's not all it'll do (Score:2)
From TFS:
U.S. biotech startup Loyal plans to launch a lifespan-extending drug for dogs in early 2024
It appears their drug can take you back in time also.
There's a catch: (Score:1)
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Can we cure dementia first (Score:5, Insightful)
(Probably also worth fixing up the general collapsing of the human body from the mid-forties on too, but dementia seems probably the greatest "What the fuck's the point if" bullet point that needs fixing.)
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Canada has a program called MAID where you can get a legal assisted suicide. The issue is that you must be of sound mind from the time you request it, through the approval process, right up until you get the fatal injection.
This really sucks for dementia. If I'm of sound mind... I want to keep living. It's once I'm confused, scared, and shitting myself that I want to die, but that's not allowed. At that point, you can no longer consent.
I think curing the various causes of dementia is a long way off. Fo
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Sadly, in the case of Alzheimer's, a big study where the scientists overstated/faked their findings resulted in companies going down the wrong rabbit hole in seeking to treat it.
Given that I lost my grandfather to Alzheimer's well before he died, well, I'm still pissed.
Re:Can we cure dementia first (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nuns tend to not get it as well. From what they can tell, using the brain meats tends to help protect against it.
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Nuns tend to not get it as well. From what they can tell, using the brain meats tends to help protect against it.
I always wondered if there was a connection. At my age, I'm seeing friends more or less stop using their intellect. Whereas my work and hobbies all take intensive thinking. Which seems to increasing set me apart mentally from my age group. So cause or effect, there is a widening gap, and I have made some predictions - we'll see how they turn out.
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There is a very old result (around 1960 or so, I think): Secretaries that regularly used typewriters did not get dementia or got it a lot later. The explanation is that typing needs a lot of muscle coordination. Something like this probably applies here as well.
Well, wo would have thought that not using your brain does rot it.
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One weird thing they just discovered: lifelong taxi drivers don't get Alzheimer's dementia.
I'm worried because I use Google Navigator for literally every trip...
You should be worried. :(
Navigating Reality is the best defense against mental deterioration. I feel like testing is needed to see if navigating virtual worlds provides the same benefits, but it seems like it shouldn't as the virtual world never interacts with you to affirm the Reality of it. Navigating in the Real World, by definition, is real.
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I can understand that. This type of scientific misconduct should result in significant prison time for the authors (all of them) and the reviewers that let this through should be looked at closely as well. Lying to make yourself look good when lives are at stake is the height of unethical behavior.
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I can understand that. This type of scientific misconduct should result in significant prison time for the authors (all of them) and the reviewers that let this through should be looked at closely as well. Lying to make yourself look good when lives are at stake is the height of unethical behavior.
Selling hope, profit, and no way to tell if they are actually working, I suppose.
My MIL was on anti- Alzheimer's drugs during her end stage. Did it do any good? Probably not, since they were working on a bad concept. And if we somehow create a drug that doesn't cure Alzheimer's but merely lengthens the death process, gonna miss me with that.
No one gets out of here alive, and all the anti aging hysteria is on the wrong end of life.
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A drug that keeps the mind intact long enough for something else to get you would be good though.
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A drug that keeps the mind intact long enough for something else to get you would be good though.
I think that is the issue. The mind fragments. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of the "long goodbye" with a loved one. At best, the stages might be lengthened a bit. But the idea that somehow the dying person is going to go along happy and lucid until that day they die in their sleep is not going to happen. That's only for the television commercials.
As well, many people are not happy demented. A year extra of screaming when their Thorazine or Haldol wears off is another treat for the famil
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The issue is that you must be of sound mind from the time you request it
Not really. Someone on a day pass from a mental institution just got MAID [www.cbc.ca].
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I am surprised you are not worried that a bureaucratic system that is a government monopoly on healthcare is offering suicide assistance. This creates catastrophic perverse incentives - every MAID saves government a lot of money.
That would be a government problem, not a MAID problem, and I have no reason at all to believe a private for-profit system would somehow be safer in that regard anyway.
If there are problems with the current system they should be fixed. The concept of individual autonomy over their death remains an inalienable right within that system.
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As opposed to the private insurance that just decides for itself without your input that it'll be cheaper if you die.
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Governments are generally kept in check by voters. If someone's close relative (son, daughter, mother, father, etc) is actively encouraged to commit suicide by a doctor then that person's representative will get uncomfortable questions, and those uncomfortable questions will be asked in parliament/congress/etc.
By comparison there is no recourse, nobody to advocate for you, if your private insurer refuses to pay for a needed treatment. Especially in the US where court case after court case has basically said
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Well. If you are smart, you can just research how to off yourself reliably and with low risk of permanent bad effects (like not being able to try again) if you fail. There are a number of reliable ways that can be accomplished, depending on your personality and means. If you are not so smart, then you are screwed. But what else is new?
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I think everyone can agree that as we age, the risk of various forms of dementia increases. But what is not as clear is whether that risk is correlated to chronological age, or whether senescence and dementia are merely the consequences of underlying inflammatory and/or epigenetic processes that can be modified.
In plain English, we have to distinguish between associations versus cause and effect. Age and dementia are associated. But maybe old age is not a CAUSE of dementia. It's possible that if we find
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There seems to be a correlation between amaloid plaque and Alzheimer's. But nobody has proven whether it is a cause or an effect, and no cures based on reducing the plaque seem to work.
If my memory is right, the severity of symptoms for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc. are not proportional to the amount of plaque made up from mis-folded proteins, but rather proportional to how much correctly folded protein is present in the brain. This suggests that the brain is getting starved of critical proteins by prions that cause those proteins to mis-fold.
Clearing out the plaque might reduce the rate of conversion from usable proteins to worthless prions if you could get enough of it out, but that's
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Check these papers out...
Infectious origin of Alzheimer’s disease: Amyloid beta as a component of brain antimicrobial immunity
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
" Importantly, the infectious hypothesis leads to testable predictions. Targeting amyloid beta should be ineffective, unless the triggering pathogen and inflammatory response are addressed as well. Meticulous control of selected infections might be the best near-term strategy for AD prevention."
Multi-pathogen infections and Alzheimer’s disease
https://microbialcellfactories... [biomedcentral.com]
"The recent discovery that the amyloid- peptide has antimicrobial activities supports the possibility of an infectious aetiology of AD and suggests that amyloid- plaque formation might be induced by infection." ...
"Two recent population studies conducted in Taiwan showed that antiviral treatment could help prevent dementia in patients with viral infections."
"Another interesting case is that of two siblings with chromosomally-integrated HHV-6A who suffered from cognitive difficulties. Several repeated courses of treatment with valganciclovir led to a near-complete clinical resolution in both patients "
The two testable predictions in the first paper seem to have borne fruit. Targeting amyloid beta has been ineffective so far. And antiviral treatment has improved the prospects for several patient populations.
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But I'm not addressing the amyloid hypothesis or even Alzheimer's dementia specifically. Rather, I'm speaking more broadly about the relationship between the biological aging process, chronological age, and diseases associated with these.
You are correct that, despite the likely validity of the amyloid hypothesis, treatments that target amyloid burden do not stop disease progression, and at best seem to only buy a little more time. Such drugs were approved under questionable circumstances (notably, Biogen'
Eating dog food (Score:2)
Chemical structure of LOY-002 (Score:2)
nope. (Score:1)
This sounds great to people who have never had an old dog. Old dogs donâ(TM)t die because they get old. They die because they either have cancer or some horrible debilitating condition that makes it impossible for them to stand up and poop. As someone with a fifteen year old dog that needs custom made leg braces to walk, no thanks .
The question remains (Score:2)
Do these even OLDER dogs learn new tricks?
in the future... (Score:2)
Never ever ever (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Never ever ever (Score:4, Interesting)
These biomechanical pathway are so important to our lives that understanding them will improve people's lives. Understanding pushing yourself to the limit in exercise activates AMPK, could be a life saving habit. It lets you better manage and run your body. Recommend everyone have a never ending desire to understand their body's system in an ever better manner.
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Sounds great. Now the rich assholes can get what they deserve when they start taking this.
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In case you weren't wise enough to stop reading at "san francisco-based," it messes with your immune system and metabolism so you're tired, cold, and sick all the time. What a great idea! That will be really popular and get FDA approved.
Sounds like a great new pathway into the chemical balancing act that modern medicine. Throw drugs at you, when they make you sick, don't take them away, throw more drugs at you to counteract the side effects of the first drugs. And when those drugs make you sicker, throw more drugs at you to counteract those side effects. A new pathway to the forever payment of chemical cocktails that make you sicker? The western pharma companies will be all about it. And I'm sure the FDA will approve it as fast as possible
Alternatives (Score:2)
If they're using Rapamycin they are probably targeting senescent cells, and there are other options such as Quercetin and Berberine which when used together may have similar effects.
Both those alternatives are available over the counter as supplements whereas Rapamycin is a serious prescription anti-cancer drug. If I was experimenting I know which option I'd try first.
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If they're using Rapamycin they are probably targeting senescent cells, and there are other options such as Quercetin and Berberine which when used together may have similar effects.
Both those alternatives are available over the counter as supplements whereas Rapamycin is a serious prescription anti-cancer drug. If I was experimenting I know which option I'd try first.
Or instead of the Berberine, if you're taking Metformin for Diabetes, you're good to go on half of your "formula":
https://www.lifeextension.com/... [lifeextension.com]
quality of evidence? (Score:2)
a press release says they started a trial in 2024. so there isn't sufficient evidence yet?
Iâ(TM)d volunteer for the human trial but (Score:2)
Lessons learned ... (Score:2)
AGE Busters (Score:2)
Novartis had an advanced glycation endproduct drug on patent and for prescription veterinary but they let the human trial lapse and a prominent human antiaging researcher has the last known samples of the drug in his lab.
Now that the patent is lapsed FDA will not allow any human trials that could be paid for.
A free market seems likely to develop. The Death Eaters will call it a black market.
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Novartis had an advanced glycation endproduct drug on patent and for prescription veterinary but they let the human trial lapse and a prominent human antiaging researcher has the last known samples of the drug in his lab.
Now that the patent is lapsed FDA will not allow any human trials that could be paid for.
A free market seems likely to develop. The Death Eaters will call it a black market.
There are other countries, countries that are not beholden to the FDA; why no continuing research outside the USA?
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I don't suppose you have the name of this drug, links to any of these studies, or a reference to the patent?