Why one science base serves both dogs and cats

A fair question about a pet supplement built on human trials: does the science actually transfer?

Conserved biology

Mitophagy, autophagy, senescent-cell burden, NK-cell and macrophage function — these are not human inventions. They are core mammalian cell biology, broadly conserved across dogs, cats, and people. When urolithin A restarts mitochondrial recycling, it acts on machinery that dogs and cats share with us. When alpha-ketoglutarate lowered inflammatory cytokines and extended healthspan in mice (Asadi Shahmirzadi et al., Cell Metabolism, 2020), it was engaging a pathway — the Krebs cycle — that is identical across mammals.

That conservation is what lets us start from the strongest available evidence base and carry it forward. And in a real sense, mice and dogs are already part of the aging-research story: the fact that a compound's first strong signals often come from animal models is the same reason the biology plausibly applies to our animals.

Where the translation gets careful

Conserved biology is not a blank check. Two things change between species, and getting them wrong is how pet supplements cause harm.

1. Dose. Cats are not small dogs, and dogs are not small people. Metabolic rate, body size, and clearance all differ. A dose has to come from the literature for that species — never scaled naively by body weight from a human trial.
2. Safety. Cats have real, specific sensitivities. They metabolize many compounds differently and are uniquely vulnerable to some — allium and xylitol are outright hazards. This is the single most common way well-meaning owners hurt their cats.

This is also why the rapamycin literature in cats matters so much despite being small: it is one of the only places where somebody actually ran the controlled trial in the species rather than assuming.

The honest bottom line

Human and mouse data is stronger than pet data for nearly every compound in this library. We say so, we cite it, and we flag the gap rather than papering over it. See exactly how we grade every compound, or read the primary literature yourself.

Not veterinary advice. Talk to your veterinarian before giving anything to your pet.

References

1. Asadi Shahmirzadi A. et al. Alpha-ketoglutarate extends lifespan and compresses morbidity in aging mice. Cell Metabolism, 2020. Link
2. Andreux P.A. et al. The mitophagy activator urolithin A is safe and induces a molecular signature of improved mitochondrial and cellular health in humans. Nature Metabolism, 2019. Link