Short Wave - Could this anti-aging dog pill lead to one for you too?

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

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.Interested in more science about your pets? Email us your question at [e-mail] public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. It includes perks like bonus episodes, early access, archive access, curated playlists and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Forrest. Forrest. Good boy. This is Ross Anderson, a staff writer at the Atlantic. And as you heard, he has a dog, Forrest. He's delighted to be on the show. Now he thinks that, like, I've called him over to play fetch.

Ross called Forrest over because he was the inspiration for Ross's reporting on a company called Loyal. They're working on a new drug, defunds. 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 Hollowah grew up. Her whole childhood, she was surrounded by animals, forming deep, loving bonds with a lot of them. 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. That bond with animals was on her mind as she went off to college. She worked at a neuroancology 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. 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. No one wants to tack on another two years of those kind of heartbreaking final months of a dog's life when they're struggling with 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. 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... 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. 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 Shorewave,

the science podcast from NPR. Okay, 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? 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 sea elegans, the round worm. I love sea elegans. All of my biology friends work on those. Yeah, yeah. They're kind of like the classic sort of easy to mess with in the lab. And in the... this case, it really benefited them because they got their lifespan doubled. Doubled. Wow. What is

their normal lifespan? Yeah, see, 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 to a month, which is something. Right. So, Ross, I'm interested in knowing, like, in this specific case, with Loyal's pill for dogs, how does it work biologically? 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. But in the end, they ended up living like a full 15% longer, just like a 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, 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. 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? 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, 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. Okay. And 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. Wow. 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. Yeah. So where is this pill at?

So the FDA has to approve the drug. When can we expect to see it available for people to use for their dogs? 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? manufacturing can you make it in a reproducible way and then safety 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 going to get over and so it's looking like the pill will be available early next year. Oh, wow. That's soon. Yeah. And in the meantime, they're running a clinical trial that is going to take, you know, another four or five years for final approval, but they can sell it with conditional approval starting probably next year. 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? You know, I know that there are some cat longevity startups, so I have that good news to report to you. 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 sort of it's easier to get them to take a pill. I think you're right. My cats won't take pills. I thought it was going to be because cats live longer, but I think you're right.

Yeah. So dogs are better at taking pills. Do the dogs, do they like it? Is it okay? 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? Right. So they had to do multiple days. and some of the dogs were actually quite discerning. In fact, one of them spat out one of the flavors they didn't like and ended up peeing on it. Oh, my gosh. What are the flavors? I think it's a beef flavor.

That's what they ended up settling on. If it was cats, it would be seafood. There's go. Okay, so this is maybe the most important question for you. I know you have a dog at home. His name is Forrest, right? I do. Forrest is that he's actually sleeping at my,

feet right now. Oh. So if this pill gets approved, are you planning to give it to your dog? Yeah. 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. Wow. You're ready. Yeah. And if they pass with flying colors, I'll absolutely give it to him. Oh my gosh. I want them a round log. Oh. Oh. There he is. Ross, thank you so much for talking with us.

I had a great time. Yeah, Regina, this was great. Thanks for having me on. If you like this episode, why don't you share it with a friend that you know is obsessed with their dog? They're going to love it and they're going to thank you for it. This episode was produced by Arundati Nair.

It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez and Tyler Jones checked the facts. Quasey Lee was the audio engineer. I'm Regina Barron. Barbara, thank you for listening to Showwave from NPR. How they verify the age of the dogs. I just thought it was funny that some of the dogs needed Facebook photos. What?

Yeah, because, like, people don't have, like, their dog birth certificate. 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 worked for age verification. 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. I feel like an old man dog. I also feel like an old man dog.