Episode shownotes
The Dog Aging Project is an innovative initiative that brings together a community of dogs, owners, veterinarians, researchers, and volunteers to carry out the most ambitious canine health study in the world. The goal of the Dog Aging Project is to understand how genes, lifestyle, and environment influence aging, and to use that information to help pets and people increase their healthspan, the period of life spent free from disease.
Co-directors Dr. Daniel Promislow and Dr. Matt Kaeberlein join the show to discuss the origins of the Dog Aging Project, the overall goals for their initiative, and why dogs are a particularly good model for human aging. They talk about their funding through the National Institutes of Health, the extensive scale of the Dog Aging Project, and its “Community Scientist” component, with canine participants still living at home with their owners. Professors Promislow and Kaeberlein explain their use of molecular biology measures to predict health outcomes for dogs, their commitment to making their data available to the scientific community as a whole, and the difference between how small dogs versus large dogs age, as well as what diseases or conditions different breeds age and die from.
Today’s fascinating conversation also touches on the impact of living in a rural versus urban areas on aging, how veterinarians feel about participating in the Dog Aging Project, the test of rapamycin in aging dogs (TRIAD), and the intrinsic value of being able to increase the lifespan and healthspan of our pets. Professors Promislow and Kaeberlein share what drew them to the field of aging, and review the importance of putting safety first in their work with dogs. Finally, you’ll hear their exciting predictions for what we can expect to see in aging research over the coming decades.
For more information on the Dog Aging Project, visit DogAgingProject.org. Thank you for listening.
Episode Highlights:
- Professors Daniel Promislow and Matt Kaeberlein are co-directors of the Dog Aging Project at the University of Washington in Seattle
- Dog Aging Project started in 2007 to investigate whether IGF-1 was associated with aging for dogs
- Chief Veterinary Officer is Kate E. Creevy
- Overall goals are to understand how genes, environment, and lifestyle shape healthy aging in dogs and the mechanisms by which they do so, and to determine whether we can intervene and improve healthy aging in dogs
- Dogs are a very good model for human aging due to their similar environment (water quality, air quality, home setting)
- Dogs age seven to 10 times more rapidly than humans do, which means we have better success carrying out longitudinal studies with them
- They also get the same types of diseases that we do
- The Dog Aging Project is funded through the National Institutes of Health, and in particular, the National Institute on Aging
- The scale of this project is notable, as well as the fact that the dogs are not in laboratories, but are living at home with their owners
- It’s a “Citizen Scientist” or “Community Science Project” effort
- They now have upwards of 32,000 owners and dogs participating, and are still enrolling at DogAgingProject.org
- They collect information about the dogs’ health, disease, activity, diet every year, over the course of their entire lives
- These molecular biology measures will allow them to predict what might happen in the future for dogs, and to improve diagnosis and prognosis
- The samples are also stored in a biobank at...