Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has become famous for his mission to help humans live forever, with his catchphrase “Don’t die.” Now he wants to do the same thing for dogs.
Johnson’s interest in canine longevity was piqued when he recently adopted a professionally trained Belgian Malinois named Katara to protect him from attackers.
This week, at a longevity event in San Francisco, Katara was a constant presence at Johnson’s side as he cheered on tech workers trying to complete as many push-ups as possible, one metric used to measure their biological age. Later, Katara, who will turn two in October, lay patiently at Johnson’s feet as he was interviewed by venture capitalist Sarah Guo.
“I get quite a few death threats, and so she is my guard dog,” Johnson explained to Guo. “We go everywhere together, and we have bonded for the past month.”
Johnson clarified to Business Insider that he has no plans to launch a company focused on canine health yet. Rather, Katara will be subjected to a version of the rigorous data collection and longevity interventions that he chronicles in great detail for his millions of followers on X and Instagram.
“She’s going to become the most measured dog in the world,” he said in an interview. “We’re going to do a whole bunch of longevity therapies on her because dogs are amazing.”
Johnson thinks there may be relatively straightforward ways to improve dogs’ health, starting with food. He said most commercial dog food contains much higher concentrations of harmful compounds.
“These are things that glue your organs together,” he said. “We’re feeding them things that are terrible for their bodies.”
Dogs and humans are not as different as one might expect, according to Johnson. That means advances in dogs can also help humans.
“It’s remarkable how much dogs and humans have in common,” he said. “When you read through the literature on dogs, and you just replace humans with dogs, there are so many similarities.”
Johnson has often been frustrated by how long it takes for new human treatments to be approved. That is much less of a problem in animals.
“The path for drug approval is substantially faster for dogs than humans, so you can get a lot of scientific work done in a shorter period of time,” he said.
Several startups are already working to extend dogs’ lifespans. Loyal is developing the first FDA-approved longevity and lifespan-extension drugs for dogs, while Rejuvenate Bio is taking a more experimental gene-therapy approach, targeting chronic age-related diseases in animals, such as osteoarthritis, heart disease, and cancer.
Johnson does not expect convincing people to improve their dogs’ health to be difficult. As someone who urges people to sleep more and avoid alcohol, he has found that many will prioritize their pets’ well-being over their own.
“Humans will oftentimes care for their dogs better than they’ll care for themselves,” he said.
