A new drug aims to extend the lifespan of dogs—but the scientist behind it tells Ross Andersen that she doesn’t plan to stop at man’s best friend. ⁠ ⁠ Andersen and his dog, Forrest, met up with Celine Halioua in Washington, D.C. Halioua is the founder of Loyal, the company behind a new life-extension pill for dogs. After college, Halioua enrolled in a doctoral program in genetics at Oxford and worked in life-extension research during her time off school. The field has never been uniformly rigorous in its approach to research. Over the years, Halioua has developed an aversion to what she described as longevity “bro science.” After a stint at the world’s largest venture fund for longevity research, Halioua founded her own longevity company.⁠ ⁠ Several recent biomedical findings suggest that a profound link exists between an animal’s metabolism and its lifespan. Loyal’s drug is designed to trigger some of the same effects of GLP-1s—but without the same deprivations. The exact mechanism of Loyal’s drug is still proprietary, but scientists at the company told Andersen that the pill tinkers with a dog’s insulin sensitivity. ⁠ ⁠ The company hopes to be able to start selling the drug—and giving people more time with their pets—next year. Halioua wants the pill to sell well so that she can build up a war chest. That way, her company could fund its own clinical trials for a human-longevity drug without having to sell out to “Big Pharma Daddy,” as she put it to Andersen.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link. 🎨: Gaia Alari