The biotech company Loyal announced that it had moved closer to bringing to market a drug that improves the life expectancy of dogs. “The data you provided are sufficient to show that there is a reasonable expectation of effectiveness,” an official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration informed the company in a recent letter. (Loyal provided a copy of the letter to The Times.)
The drug is a long way from approval and the F.D.A. must still review the company’s safety and manufacturing data. But conditional approval, which Loyal hopes to receive in 2026, would allow the company to begin marketing the drug for canine life extension, even before a large clinical trial is complete.
More are in the pipeline. A team of academic researchers is currently conducting a canine clinical trial of rapamycin, which has been shown to extend the lives of lab mice. And Loyal is recruiting dogs for a clinical trial of another drug candidate, dubbed LOY-002.
Importantly, the cellular activity of these early drugs is known and so will attract further analysis and refinement. That is to say, the research will be more targeted and will get better.
Longevity studies, by definition, take a long time and, while dogs match well with human studies, they have a much shorter life span, which exaggerates the time requirements. And subjective evaluation is very inaccurate.
But these studies are coming. Metformin has shown evidence it improves survival rates in healthy controls. Then, of course, the quality of life question will arise, as will the therapeutic possibilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment