180M
Canines experiencing arthritis globally
1
Canine longevity treatments with conditional FDA approval
$18B
US companion animal pharmaceutical market
The majority of elderly canines will experience arthritis in their lives.
Degenerative disorders cascade: reduced mobility triggers muscle loss, adiposity gain, metabolic decline, and chronic inflammation. All of these, in turn, reduce lifespan.
Follistatin gene therapy offers a breakthrough approach with multiple mechanisms of action. A single administration could provide relief for months. By inhibiting myostatin and activin, follistatin reduces inflammatory cytokines, preserves muscle tissue, and supports cartilage integrity. This shifts treatment from symptom management to addressing underlying aging mechanisms.
Canines are an ideal translational model for human aging. They naturally develop osteoarthritis like humans, share our environment, and experience similar age-related frailty syndromes. We believe that a combination of treatments will drive the most meaningful longevity gains, and that it is on us to develop new ways of performing science to vet them.
By breaking the feedback loop between inflammation and systemic aging, we aim to create effective canine longevity interventions that will inform human therapeutic development.
Longevity
Can we meaningfully extend lifespan? Proving the effects of longevity treatments with our companions will help people believing that longevity treatments are attainable. Recently, the FDA began evaluating lifespan enhancing treatments for canines, and one company has even gained conditional approval to market their treatment.
Degenerative Disease
Reversing degeneration is essential to extending lifespan. Our studies will focus on whether it is possible to slow, or even reverse, the progression of degenerative diseases. We will eventually explore a combination of treatments to reach the best possible outcomes: people and their animal companions living without the burden of degenerative diseases.
Decentralized Trials
How can we conduct meaningful longevity science? What does a multi-treatment, multiple year study look like, and how can tokens incentivize long term participation? Dog Years may use tokens for trial participant referrals, for participating in a trial, or for providing follow up data after the main study has concluded.
＠dogyearsdao on 𝕏
Discord community
Dog Years DAO will convert clinical data into sustainable value through tiered licensing. The initial dataset on follistatin gene therapy outcomes will be licensed to biotech companies using a three-tier model, each with a corresponding fee and royalty structures. This data solves a critical problem for companies entering the pet longevity market: endpoint selection risk. Clinical trials often fail from selecting the wrong measurements. Dog Year’s dataset will reveal which degenerative conditions respond best to follistatin therapy, and which metrics are best to focus on in later therapy trials.
The DAO's token economy directly links data generation to value capture. Contributors (clinics, researchers, pet owners) earn tokens. Reserve tokens fund future trials and incentivize long-term follow-up data submission - creating an increasingly valuable longitudinal dataset that will augment the DAO’s ultimate goal of commercializing treatments across multiple regulatory environments.
Science Translational Medicine
Follistatin Gene Delivery Enhances Muscle Growth and Strength in Nonhuman Primates
Science Advances
Gene therapy for follistatin mitigates systemic metabolic inflammation and post-traumatic arthritis in high-fat diet–induced obesity
Companion Animal
