The Cornell Veterinary Biobank has received a $2.5 million federal grant to process, store and distribute biological samples for the Dog Aging Project, a massive national effort to study aging in dogs – and humans.
The National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the National Institutes of Health, selected Cornell for the four-year grant due in part to the biobank’s International Organization for Standardization (ISO) accreditation. The Cornell biobank is the first to meet ISO’s rigorous international standard for biobanks and offers a complete range of services, including sample collection, acquisition, preparation, preservation, testing, analysis, storage, and distribution.
Susan Garrison, a nurse at the Cornell Veterinary Biobank, holds a puppy
The partnership will allow Cornell to bank samples from thousands of dogs from a nationwide cross-section of households. Companion dogs enrolled in the Dog Aging Project share the same environment, lifestyle, and sometimes the same food as their owners, making them better models for studying human disease than mice that live in controlled environments.
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