Pod Insights Short Wave Could this anti-aging dog pill lead to one for you too? About this episode Every dog lover’s greatest fear is inevitably losing their pet to time. We want our furry pals to stick around as long as they can. That wish may soon become reality with a new pill from a company called Loyal. It aims to extend the lives–and health–of dogs. This new drug also serves as a pitstop on a much bigger quest: to eventually lengthen human lives.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.
0:18 Regina Barber? You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.
0:23 Speaker 02 Forest.
0:28 Regina Barber? Good boy. This is Ross Anderson, a staff writer at The Atlantic. And as you heard, he has a dog, Forest.
0:36 Speaker 03 He's delighted to be on the show. Now he thinks that, like, I've called him over to play fetch.
0:41 Regina Barber? Ross called Forest over because he was the inspiration for Ross's reporting on a company called Loyal. They're working on a new drug to fight against every dog lover's greatest fear: inevitably losing their pet to time. The hope is this new pill will extend the lives of dogs. And the vision all started in the rural outskirts of Austin, Texas, where Loyal's founder, Celine Hollowa, grew up. Her whole childhood, she was surrounded by animals, forming deep, loving bonds with a lot of them.
1:10 Speaker 03 She told me her family had, like, 15 dogs and cats, and most of them were strays. And she fell in love, actually, with a horse that lived locally. He lived with a ratchet cowboy, is how she described it to me.
1:26 Regina Barber? That bond with animals was on her mind as she went off to college.
1:30 Speaker 03 She worked at a neuro-oncology lab and so got to kind of see just the horror, the cosmic horror, really, of brain cancer very close up. And it had a profound effect upon her.
1:42 Regina Barber? Loyal's drug is still working through the FDA's approval process. But their preliminary results show it could extend your dog's life a year, or even two. And just as importantly, their health.
1:53 Speaker 03 No one wants to tack on another two years of those, like, kind of heartbreaking final months of a dog's life when they're struggling with, you know, the very worst health issues. This is intended to not only extend their lives, but also, like, make kind of the back half of their life much more pleasant for them, kind of in a whole-body way.
2:16 Regina Barber? And as exciting as this pill is on its own for dog lovers, it also serves a much bigger purpose. To be an important pit stop on the quest to eventually lengthen human lives because-
2:28 Speaker 03 We have certain things in common in our body plan, but also they age in many of the same ways that we do. They get the same cancers and are treated with the same chemotherapies.
2:39 Regina Barber? So today on the show, why a boon for man's best friend may be a boon for humanity itself down the line. We get into how this pill works for dogs and why that same mechanism may be a blueprint for a pill for you one day. Plus, why scientists haven't gotten the job done for cats yet? I'm Regina Barber and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.
3:08 Regina Barber? OK, Ross, you're here to tell us about a new pill that may make our dogs live longer and healthier. But this isn't the first time that science has successfully made organisms live longer. What are some other times or ways scientists have extended life?
3:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, I'm sorry to report that it starts with worms. Starting in the 1990s, a brilliant scientist named Cynthia Kenyon lengthened, doubled the lifespan, actually, of C. elegans, the roundworm.
3:38 Regina Barber? I love C. elegans. All of my biology friends work on those.
3:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, they're kind of like the classic, sort of easy to mess with in the lab. And in this case, it really benefited them because they got their lifespan doubled.
3:50 Regina Barber? Doubled? Wow. What is their normal lifespan?
3:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, C. elegans, you know, it's not a long-lived animal, right? It only lives about two to three weeks. And so by doubling it, I think, you know, she got it up to a month, which is something.
4:02 Regina Barber? Right. So Ross, I'm interested in knowing, like, in this specific case with Loyal's pill for dogs, how does it work biologically?
4:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, it actually goes at the metabolism, which may be counterintuitive. But there was a striking study done in the 1990s by Purina, the dog food company, where they took 50 Labrador puppies and they split them up and they fed half of them 25% less. Sorry to those dogs. In the end, they ended up living like a full fifteen percent longer, just like
4:36 Regina Barber? Wow.
4:37 Speaker 03 Really, really dramatic result. And so that was a big clue that life extension in general might be attacked through the metabolism and that particularly you could do it through dogs. Now, when you put that together with the fact that that technique that had extended the lives of roundworms actually attacked the insulin receptors of those roundworms. So that also was a metabolic pathway. Similarly, there is accumulating evidence that GLP-1s could, you know, act in a kind of life extending way across the whole body. And those also are metabolic drugs. And so, yeah,
5:19 Speaker 03 I think there's just, you know, it's not just saline and Loyal. I think in the life extension industry in general, metabolism is hot right now. There's just a real sense that this could be the key to, you know, significantly extending not just dogs' lives, but potentially our lives.
5:36 Regina Barber? This is surprising. Like, when I think about aging and dying, I usually think about heart failure or something happening to my brain or something. How exactly does the pill target metabolism? And how does that help with aging?
5:49 Speaker 03 Okay, so the first thing to know is that as dogs age, their insulin sensitivity gets a lot worse. So like in a healthy, young dog, as soon as, you know, they wolf down some kibble,
6:03 Speaker 03 their blood sugar goes up and their body releases just like a tiny bit of insulin. And all the tissue around their body that absorbs glucose, you know, senses that insulin, that like tiny, tiny pulse of it, and gobbles up the glucose, right? As they get older, those tissue systems around the body, they get bad at listening for that insulin. And so, as a result, the dog has to pump more and more insulin throughout its body in order to get to have that glucose get absorbed. And that excess insulin causes inflammation all across the body and aggravates a lot of its aging.
6:41 Regina Barber? Okay.
6:42 Speaker 03 So the Loyal pill helps to restore that insulin sensitivity. And the way it does it is, once the dog has like the kibble and its blood sugar spikes, this pill dissolves, the particles kind of go all throughout the body like little Paul Revere's telling those tissue systems, listen for the insulin, listen for the insulin.
7:02 Regina Barber? Wow.
7:02 Speaker 03 And that way, the dog doesn't have this huge glut of insulin flowing all over its body, accelerating its aging processes, causing inflammation, et cetera, et cetera.
7:14 Regina Barber? Yeah, so where is this pill at? Like, so the FDA has to approve the drug. When can we expect to see it available for people to use for their dogs?
7:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, so there are three kind of main prongs of conditional approval at the FDA, and they are efficacy, which is like, does the thing work?
7:34 Regina Barber? Mm-hmm.
7:35 Speaker 03 Manufacturing, can you make it in a reproducible way? And then, safety.
7:40 Regina Barber? Mm-hmm.
7:40 Speaker 03 And right now, Loyal has had the efficacy and safety. They have conditional approval for both of those, so they're only waiting on manufacturing. And I don't, manufacturing drugs is super complicated, and I don't want to trivialize it, but of those three, that's like the right one to be outstanding. Like, I think that's a hurdle they're gonna get over. And so, it's looking like the pill will be available early next year.
8:05 Regina Barber? Oh, wow, that's soon.
8:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, and in the meantime, they're running a clinical trial that is gonna take, you know, another four or five years for final approval, but they can sell it with conditional approval, starting probably next year.
8:18 Regina Barber? So, you know, I have a personal question. This is being focused on dogs, but why not cats? I have four cats, and are there pills for cats?
8:30 Speaker 03 You know, I know that there are some cat longevity startups, so I have that good news to report to you.
8:35 Regina Barber? Okay.
8:36 Speaker 03 But I will say that one reason that I think dogs may have edged out cats is like the first kind of sample animal for this is, they just are, it's easier to get them to take a pill.
8:49 Regina Barber? I think you're right. My cats won't take pills. I thought it was gonna be because cats live longer, but I think you're right.
8:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:55 Regina Barber? So dogs are better at taking pills. Do the dogs, do they like it? Is it OK?
9:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, I'll tell you what. Dogs are better at taking pills, but they're not perfect. And because this is going to be a daily pill that they will take for literally the rest of their lives, Loyal actually put together a focus group of like 20 taste tester dogs to get the flavor right. And it was interesting. They couldn't just do it one day because dogs will just like chomp down anything the first time, right?
9:26 Regina Barber? Right.
9:26 Speaker 03 So they had to do multiple days. And some of the dogs were actually like quite discerning. In fact, one of them spat out one of the flavors they didn't like and ended up peeing on it.
9:37 Regina Barber? Oh, my gosh. What are the flavors?
9:39 Speaker 03 I think it's a beef flavor. That's what they ended up settling on.
9:42 Regina Barber? If it was cats, it would be seafood.
9:46 Speaker 03 There you go.
9:47 Regina Barber? OK, so this is maybe the most important question for you. I know you have a dog at home. His name is Forrest, right?
9:54 Speaker 03 I do. Forrest is, he's actually sleeping at my feet right now.
9:58 Regina Barber? Oh. So if this pill gets approved, are you planning to give it to your dog?
10:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, so Forrest is four years old. So he's in a little bit of a sweet spot because the clinical trial to see like if and how well this thing works to like very high precision will be done by the time he's eligible. Dogs are eligible at 10 years old.
10:20 Regina Barber? Wow, you're ready.
10:21 Speaker 03 Yeah. And if they pass with flying colors, I'll absolutely give it to him.
10:26 Regina Barber? Oh, my gosh.
10:27 Speaker 03 I want him around Luger. Oh.
10:30 Regina Barber? There he is.
10:33 Regina Barber? Ross, thank you so much for talking with us. I had a great time.
10:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, Regina, this was great. Thanks for having me on.
10:40 Regina Barber? If you liked this episode, why don't you share it with a friend that you know is obsessed with their dog? They're gonna love it and they're gonna thank you for it. This episode was produced by Arundhati Nayar. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez, and Tyler Jones checked the facts. Kwasi Lee was the audio engineer. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR.
11:07 Speaker 03 How they verified the age of the dogs, I just thought it was funny that like some of the dogs needed Facebook photos.
11:13 Regina Barber? What?
11:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, because like people don't have like their dog birth certificates. So they had to like put like screenshots of their Facebook posts showing that, you know, them being like, I got a new puppy, you know, and it's timestamped. That that worked for age verification.
11:28 Regina Barber? You know, you have like the old man dogs and you have like, you know, they're losing their sight, they're losing their hearing.
11:36 Speaker 03 I feel like an old man dog.
11:38 Regina Barber? I also feel like an old man dog.
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