In late 2019, scientists began seeking 10,000 Americans willing to enroll their pets in an ambitious new study on dog health and longevity. The researchers planned to track the dogs throughout their lives, collecting detailed information about their bodies, lifestyles and home environments. Over time, scientists hoped to identify the biological and environmental factors that kept some dogs healthy in their golden years and uncover insights about aging that could help both dogs and humans live longer, healthier lives.
Today, the Canine Aging Project has enrolled 47,000 canines and counting, and the data is starting to trickle in. Scientists say they are just getting started.
“We think of the Dog Aging Project as a forever project, so recruitment is ongoing,” said Daniel Promislow, a biogerontologist at the University of Washington and co-director of the project. “There will always be new questions to ask. We always want dogs of all ages to participate.”
But Dr Promislow and his colleagues now face the prospect that the Canine Aging Project could be cut short. About 90 percent of the study's funding comes from the National Institute on Aging, a part of the National Institutes of Health, which has provided more than $28 million since 2018. But that money will run out in June and it doesn't seem likely than the institute to approve the researchers' recent request for a five-year grant renewal, the scientists say.
“We've been told informally that the grant will not be funded,” said Matt Kaeberlein, the other director of the Dog Aging Project and a former biogerontology researcher at the University of Washington. (Dr. Kaeberlein is now the CEO of Optispan, a health technology company.)
A spokeswoman for the National Institute on Aging said the NIH does not comment on the decision-making process for individual grant applications.
The NIA could still choose to provide more funding for the Canine Aging Project at some point, but if the researchers don't raise more money in the coming months, they will have to pause or scale back the study.
“It's almost an emergency,” said Stephanie Lederman, executive director of the nonprofit American Federation for Aging Research. “It's one of the most important projects in this field right now.”
A petition asking for continued support from the National Institutes of Health has garnered more than 10,000 signatures, said Dr. Kaeberlein, who organized the initiative.
Still, researchers aren't counting on the agency to come to their rescue, and they've learned how difficult it is to conduct large, long-term studies (that could take many years to bear fruit) when grants are typically awarded on a short-term basis. . -term basis.
That's why the three founders of the Dog Aging Project (Dr. Promislow, Dr. Kaeberlein, and Dr. Kate Creevy, a veterinarian at Texas A&M University) have created the Dog Aging Institute, a nonprofit fundraising organization. for research. They hope to use the organization both to keep their own study alive and to fund other scientists interested in exploring similar topics.
“The data is coming fast and furious,” Dr. Promislow said. “If anything, we have had to slow it down because of these funding challenges. And it's the worst possible time to slow things down, because now is the time when the really exciting things are just starting to happen.”
The Dog Aging Project was born from two observations. First of all, people would give almost anything to have more good years with their dogs. Second, canine companions could be useful models for human aging. Dogs are prone to many of the same aging-related conditions that people experience, including cancer and dementia, and are exposed to many of the same environmental stressors, such as air pollution and noise. But because dogs age more quickly, studies on canine aging can yield results in shorter periods of time.
That was the case the founders of the Dog Aging Project made when they asked the National Institute on Aging to fund a large, long-term study of companion dogs. In 2018, the institute awarded researchers a five-year grant, which was later extended by one year.
The study is extensive. Owners of all enrolled dogs are asked to complete an annual 10-part health and life experience survey, are encouraged to share the animals' medical records, and are invited to participate in a variety of other surveys and activities. The researchers also aim to sequence the genomes of more than 10,000 dogs; 1,000 of those animals will also provide a series of biological samples (including blood, urine, feces and hair) each year. They are also enrolling hundreds of dogs in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of rapamycin, a drug that has been shown to prolong the lives of laboratory animals.
The researchers estimated in their 2018 grant application that it would take at least three months to build the physical, digital and human infrastructure for the study. The process ended up lasting three years. “I don't think anyone realized how difficult it was going to be,” Dr. Promislow said. (The pandemic, which closed or put pressure on veterinary clinics, didn't help, he added.)
But the project is underway. The research team, which includes more than 100 people from more than 20 institutions, has sequenced the genomes of more than 7,000 dogs and deposited 14,000 samples in the project's biobank. The scientists added more than 36.5 million data points to their open-access database and began publishing some of the first findings. They have found, for example, that a condition called canine cognitive dysfunction, also known as canine dementia, is more common in sedentary dogs than in active dogs and that dogs fed once a day are less likely to have a variety of problems. of health than those who eat once a day. those who eat more frequently. More articles are in the works.
But when the researchers applied for a five-year renewal of the grant last year, their application did not score well enough in the first round of peer review to advance to the next stage of the funding process. “The reviewers were asking how much we had accomplished in five years,” Dr. Promislow said. “Given the size of the project, I think the reviewers were wondering where the most important articles are.”
Steven Austad, a biogerontologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who is not part of the research team, said he was surprised that the researchers' grant was not renewed. “The importance of the things they publish and the depth of the details will increase over time, but I think they are off to a very good start,” he said. “A study as large as this really deserves a chance to mature.”
Emmylou, Dr. Austad's miniature dachshund, is enrolled in the Canine Aging Project. But at two years old, he noted, Emmylou “still won't teach you much about aging for a long time.”
The project's innovative approach could have worked against it, Dr. Austad added. Reviewers accustomed to evaluating short-term research in laboratory mice and long-term studies in humans may not have known what to make of a huge epidemiological study of companion dogs.
Whatever the reason, the refusal to commit to increased funding is “wrong,” Dr. Kaeberlein said. “It is really very difficult to justify this decision, if you look at the productivity and impact of the project.”
That impact extends beyond the findings themselves, he added. “This project has engaged nearly 50,000 Americans in biomedical scientific research.”
In recent years, Shelley Carpenter of Gulfport, Mississippi, has provided researchers with regular updates and medical records of her Pembroke Welsh corgi, Murfee. She (she also collected a cheek swab for genomic sequencing). Carpenter, whose previous corgi died of a neurodegenerative disease similar to ALS, hoped the project could produce new medical knowledge that could help both dogs and people.
If the NIH stops funding, it will be “wasting” years of research, said Carpenter, who signed the petition. “Why did they start it if they are not going to continue?”
The researchers plan to apply for more NIA grants, Dr. Promislow said, but have realized they will need to develop additional funding sources to ensure the project's future. Although the Dog Aging Institute is still in the nascent stages, researchers hope to ultimately raise between $40 and $50 million for an endowment that could be used to fund a variety of research related to canine health and longevity, including the Dog Aging Project.
The institute's immediate priority is to raise enough money to keep the Canine Aging Project afloat. About $7 million would be needed to carry out the research the team had planned to do over the next year, but $2 million would be enough to “keep the lights on,” Dr. Promislow said. The institute is still waiting for its official tax-exempt status, but is already seeking donations. ““We have not yet identified any dog-loving billionaires interested in supporting aging research,” Dr. Promislow said. “But we're certainly going to try.”
