saw this: gene therapy trial in old beagles hit its endpoint

by tash.w

ok this one is right in my lane for once. a company called Genflow said last month their gene therapy trial in older beagles met its primary endpoint. 24 dogs, all over 10, randomised and blinded, endpoint was a drop in "biological age" on a methylation clock. full results were meant to go out at a longevity summit at the start of october but i cant find what was actually presented. honest reaction from the clinic side. 24 dogs is tiny. and a clock going down isnt the same as a dog being less stiff on walks or living longer, which is what owners in my waiting room care about. but old dogs are a decent test case? they age in the same houses we do. anyone know if a clock reading has ever turned out to mean something real later

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Aoife Nguyen 1 week ago

tash, good instinct on the clock. A methylation clock is a surrogate endpoint, a number we hope tracks the thing we care about. Medicine has surrogates that moved nicely while the outcome didn't (some cholesterol drugs fixed the lab value and not the heart attacks) and some that held up, like blood pressure. Nobody knows yet which kind these clocks are, and 24 dogs can't settle it. Where I'd push back: the dogs are the interesting part. Owners notice everything, vets keep records for years, and a 10 year old beagle gives you real outcomes (mobility, kidney numbers, lifespan) years before a human trial could. If they follow these dogs to the end and publish all of it, that will tell us more than the clock.

Farah Weber 6 days ago

Late to this, but tash and Aoife have the clock question right. One thing I'd add from the bench side, since nobody's mentioned it. A methylation clock is trained on a population, usually blood from a lot of individuals of different ages. When an intervention moves it, you have to ask whether the therapy changed ageing or just changed which cells are in the sample. Anything that shifts immune cell composition can nudge a clock without touching the tissues you care about. Known trap. So the follow-up I'd want isn't a bigger clock drop. It's the same clock run on a second tissue, plus the boring outcomes Aoife listed. If both move together in the same dogs, I'd start getting excited. Not deflating you, tash, just moving where the risk sits.

tash.w 4 days ago

farah the second tissue thing makes sense to me. we already take bloods on most seniors at their annual check so thats easy, but a second tissue on a dog means sedating it which no owner signs up for unless theres a dental or a lump coming off anyway so maybe thats the trick, piggyback on the procedures they were having regardless? would be slow but loads of old beagles have dentals lol