Dog as man’s best friend is a trope that stretches across sitcoms, cartoons, and even reporters’ news articles. Now a small startup in Philadelphia is making the saying applicable to the pharmaceutical and drug development world.
Drugs that are developed by pharmaceutical companies are tested on laboratory animals, such as mice and monkeys. As the Food and Drug Administration outlines, usually drugs to be used in human clinical trials are tested first in animals to evaluate their safety and how they interact with living tissue. But the typical testing method is to take a healthy animal, give them a certain disease, test the drug, therapy, or medical device, and then kill them.
The One Health Company is trying something new by finding dogs (and cats) with naturally occurring diseases that are also present in humans, like bone cancer, and testing new drugs or therapies on them. The goal is two-fold: Provide pro-bono care for pet owners to heal their own pets, while facilitating bringing new drugs to market by collecting data for pharmaceutical companies.
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