I’m excited to share that Loyal and Crinetics Pharmaceuticals ($CRNX), a clinical-stage human pharmaceutical company, are partnering to help dogs — and possibly one day people — live longer, healthier lives.
Crinetics has granted Loyal a worldwide exclusive veterinary license for their compound CRN01941. Referred to as LOY-003, this is our third drug in development, and we aim to bring it to market for large-dog lifespan extension as soon as 2026.
This is a breakthrough collaboration for us in many ways. In the immediate term, it significantly advances our efforts to extend the lifespan of large-breed dogs. And seen through a wider lens, it demonstrates — and catalyzes — the translational value of Loyal’s dog aging work to understanding and developing medicines for human aging and disease.
Crinetics × Loyal
CRN01941 was originally developed by Crinetics to help humans with acromegaly — a rare disease caused by the pituitary gland adenomas that secrete increased levels of growth hormone.
Why would an acromegaly therapy for humans be important to our work on longevity in dogs? The answer lies in one of the earliest breakthroughs we had in our research into the lifespans of large-breed dogs.
The short lifespan of large dogs: inherent, or a disease?
The larger a dog, the shorter their expected lifespan. At the extremes, small breeds may live as long as 16 years, while a giant breed like a Great Dane has an expected lifespan of only seven years.
Most people have accepted this as inevitable, but we don’t believe it is. Instead, we hypothesize that the short lifespan of large dogs is an unintended consequence of historical inbreeding for size — and therefore, able to be targeted and treated with a drug.
This is the basis for LOY-001, the injectable medicine we’re developing to extend the lifespan and healthspan of large-breed dogs.
The drug we’ve licensed from Crinetics targets the same mechanism as our LOY-001 drug, with hypothesized similar benefit. Crucially, LOY-003 is able to be delivered orally, as a convenient daily pill. This makes LOY-003 less expensive to manufacture and distribute than an injectable, which translates into lower costs for dog owners — and that means helping more dogs.
Dogs helping humans
The partnership also gives Crinetics access to our preclinical and clinical data on how the drug affects dogs, which they believe may help them in their work on human therapies. This partnership represents the first external validation of our thesis from day one: that dog aging drugs are a key step to understanding human aging.
Like-minded partners
Beyond the licensing and data sharing aspects of this partnership, Crinetics is a founder-led company, and we’re personally excited to learn from its co-founders — and dog lovers — Scott Struthers, Chief Executive Officer, and Stephen Betz, Chief Scientific Officer. In that spirit, Stephen Betz will be joining the Loyal Board of Directors as an observer.
Save the dogs, save the world!
