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. 2025 Aug;47(4):5725-5748.
doi: 10.1007/s11357-025-01571-3. Epub 2025 Mar 4.

Rationale and design of the Dog Aging Project precision cohort: a multi-omic resource for longitudinal research in geroscience

Jena Prescott  1 , Amber J Keyser  2 , Paul Litwin  2 , Matthew D Dunbar  2 , Robyn McClelland  3 , Audrey Ruple  4 , Holley Ernst  1 , Brianna L Butler  1 , Mandy Kauffman  2 , Anne Avery  5 , Benjamin R Harrison  6 , Maria Partida-Aguilar  6 , Brianah M McCoy  7 , Elizabeth Slikas  7 , Ashlee K Greenier  7 , Efrat Muller  8 , Yadid M Algavi  9 , Tal Bamberger  9 , Kate E Creevy  1 ; DAP Consortium; Elhanan Borenstein  10 , Noah Snyder-Mackler  7 , Daniel E L Promislow  11
Collaborators, Affiliations

Rationale and design of the Dog Aging Project precision cohort: a multi-omic resource for longitudinal research in geroscience

Jena Prescott et al. Geroscience. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

A significant challenge in multi-omic geroscience research is the collection of high quality, fit-for-purpose biospecimens from a diverse and well-characterized study population with sufficient sample size to detect age-related changes in physiological biomarkers. The Dog Aging Project designed the precision cohort to study the mechanisms underlying age-related change in the metabolome, microbiome, and epigenome in companion dogs, an emerging model system for translational geroscience research. One thousand dog-owner pairs were recruited into cohort strata based on life stage, sex, size, and geography. We designed and built a novel implementation of the REDCap electronic data capture system to manage study participants, logistics, and biospecimen and survey data collection in a secure online platform. In collaboration with primary care veterinarians, we collected and processed blood, urine, fecal, and hair samples from 976 dogs. The resulting data include complete blood count, chemistry profile, immunophenotyping by flow cytometry, metabolite quantification, fecal microbiome characterization, epigenomic profile, urinalysis, and associated metadata characterizing sample conditions at collection and during lab processing. The project, which has already begun collecting second- and third-year samples from precision cohort dogs, demonstrates that scientifically useful biospecimens can be collected from a geographically dispersed population through collaboration with private veterinary clinics and downstream labs. The data collection infrastructure developed for the precision cohort can be leveraged for future studies. Most important, the Dog Aging Project is an open data project. We encourage researchers around the world to apply for data access and utilize this rich, constantly growing dataset in their own work.

Keywords: Dogs; Epigenome; Flow cytometry; Longitudinal; Metabolome; Microbiome; Molecular epidemiology; Systems biology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Animal welfare and informed owner consent: All enrolled dogs live at home with their owners. Study-related procedures were approved by the Texas A&M University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, under Animal Use Protocol 2021–0316 CAM (effective 12/14/2021). Participating owners complete a comprehensive Informed Owner Consent process and provide consent via digital signature prior to providing data or biospecimens. Open data: The Dog Aging Project is an open data project. These data are housed on the Terra platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Interested researchers and the general public can apply for data access at dogagingproject.org/data-access . Competing interests: Daniel Promislow is a consultant for WndrHLTH.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Precision cohort enrollment pathway from enrollment in the Dog Aging Project Pack (step 1) through enrollment in the precision cohort (step 8). HLES, Health and Life Experience Survey; VEMR, Veterinary Electronic Medical Record
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Number of dogs enrolled by geographic region. The target number for each region is also displayed. Enrollment for every region was within 6% of target enrollment except for East South Central
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Distribution of collection date (left of red line) and predicted collection date (right of red line) for years 1, 2, and 3 biospecimen kits as of July 31, 2024
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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