Rapamycin and other anti-aging interventions under study in dogs have potential to extend healthy lifespan and improve late-life welfare for companion dogs.
Rapamycin research in dogs represents the leading edge of geroscience applied to companion animal welfare — an attempt to address aging itself rather than individual age-related diseases. If successful, the welfare implication is profound: not just longer life but more years lived in good health before the period of declining function and disease accumulation. The Dog Aging Project positions dogs as both beneficiaries of anti-aging research and valuable research subjects whose aging biology, shared with humans through similar environments, generates insights applicable to human medicine as well. The welfare motivation and the scientific motivation align exceptionally well in this research program.