Banking on a new understanding: translational opportunities from veterinary biobanks

Current advances in geroscience are due in part to the discovery of biomarkers with high predictive ability in short-lived laboratory animals such as flies and mice. These model species, however, do not always adequately reflect human physiology and disease, highlighting the need for a more comprehensive and relevant model of human aging. Domestic dogs offer a solution to this obstacle, as they share many aspects not only of the physiological and pathological trajectories of their human counterpart, but also of their environment. Furthermore, they age at a considerably faster rate. Studying aging in the companion dog provides an opportunity to better understand the biological and environmental determinants of healthy lifespan in our pets, and to translate those findings to human aging. Biobanking, the systematic collection, processing, storage, and distribution of biological material and associated data has contributed to basic, clinical, and translational research by streamlining the management of high-quality biospecimens for biomarker discovery and validation. In this review, we discuss how veterinary biobanks can support research on aging, particularly when integrated into large-scale longitudinal studies. As an example of this concept, we introduce the Dog Aging Project Biobank.