A bet that aging is treatable, starting with dogs

USVC has purchased a position with exposure to Loyal.

Loyal is developing drugs to extend the healthy lifespan of dogs, but the real bet is bigger than dogs. Loyal is trying to prove that aging itself can be treated and is on track to bring the first drug to extend lifespan to market next year.

If it works, it may end up being one of the most important companies of the next few decades.

So why has no one built a drug for aging?

Because in humans, you cannot run the trial. Proving a drug extends healthy life could take decades and cost billions of dollars. Your patent can expire before you have an answer. No rational company signs up for that.

That is the wall the whole field has been stuck behind.

Celine Halioua, who started Loyal in 2019, found a way around it.

Dogs age the way we do. They get cancer, dementia, arthritis, and heart disease, on a clock that runs faster than ours. They live in our homes, breathe our air, and share our habits.

That can make a great model for human aging.

It also makes the math work.

A dog drug can cost roughly $50 million to bring to approval, not a billion. Dogs live short enough that a trial can provide an answer in a few years, not a few decades. And vets are often paid in cash, so owners can access preventive medicine without fighting an insurance company.

Most dimensions that make a human longevity drug impossible can be made possible in a dog drug.

There was no approval path for a drug that treats aging. Aging is not a recognized disease. So Loyal built one.

Working with the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, Loyal earned something called a reasonable expectation of effectiveness for its first longevity drug in 2023. It was likely the first time the FDA had done that for any drug targeting lifespan in any species, including us.

Loyal's lead drug, LOY-002, is a daily pill for senior dogs. It has now cleared two of the three technical sections the FDA requires for conditional approval: effectiveness and safety. The third focuses on manufacturing and is in progress. At the same time, Loyal is running the STAY study, reportedly the largest clinical trial in the history of veterinary medicine, with roughly 1,300 dogs across 70 clinics, to support its application for full approval.

The regulatory precedent Loyal is setting is the real asset. If a drug can be approved to extend healthy life in a dog, the door may finally open to developing similar drugs for humans.

I want to be clear about what this is: LOY-002 is not approved yet. The confirmatory data is still coming, a human drug is years away and far from certain, and plenty can still go wrong.

But the progress is real, and serious people are backing it. Loyal has raised more than $250 million. The latest round, $100 million this year, brought in Baillie Gifford, the firm that backed Amazon, Tesla, and SpaceX early.

This is a bet on a hard science problem, made with eyes open.

We have our exposure to Loyal by buying out investors in a fund that holds Loyal.

We priced those buyouts net of the funds' carry and management fees.

To be clear on what that means: You don't own Loyal shares, and you don't own those funds.

You own shares of USVC, a registered fund that holds exposure to Loyal alongside companies like Mercury, Supabase, Mercor, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Sierra.

What you get is also exposure, through a registered fund, to one of the boldest science bets in America right now.

You can start with $500 (or more) →

— Ankur

P.S. We're soon opening the ability to invest in USVC directly from a retirement account through our partnership network, including a Roth IRA.

For decades this was a strategy you had to be lucky enough to stumble into. We think it should just be a strategy you can choose.

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The investors who've built real positions in venture didn't find the perfect moment. They started early and stayed long.

 USVC is how you build that position, starting with as little as $500.