In this conversational interview, 27‑year‑old biotech founder Celine Halioua introduces herself with a bold, self‑styled “heretic” identity and explains why she is developing drugs to extend dogs’ healthspan and lifespan. She argues that dogs are an ideal translational model because they have co‑evolved with humans, develop the same age‑related diseases at comparable ages, and have a relatively short lifespan that allows rapid assessment of longevity interventions—something not feasible in humans or even cats. Halioua reframes aging research as preventative medicine, emphasizing that targeting the underlying aging process is more effective and biologically tractable than treating end‑stage diseases. She acknowledges the ethical and cultural resistance to life‑extension ideas, describing the field as “heretical,” but asserts that success in obtaining the first aging‑related drug approval through the veterinary FDA would set a precedent and reduce the perceived heretical nature of the work, ultimately benefiting the broader human aging field. Throughout, she balances enthusiasm for the potential impact with a realistic view of market considerations and public perception.
Chapters
I am a 27-year-old female biotech founder. I walk into a room wearing like a zebra skirt and heels and like hot pink nails. Like, what is this person? Hi, my name is Celine Halioua and I'm a heretic because I work on dog lifespan extension and I believe that the aging process itself is druggable and potentially fixable. Is it heretic or heretic?
Heretic.
Sweet. Let's do it.
Radicals, dissidents, rebels, and misfits. You can call them whatever you like, but what if they're right?
Perfect. That was good for me if it was good for you. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Cool. So nobody questions that I'm working on aging or developing drugs for lifespan extension. Everyone's like, "But dogs? Like, why dogs? Would anybody pay for dogs?" And I have to go and be like, "Yes, there's a market for dogs." It's a whole thing, right?
The first question that pops into my head is just, "Why dogs and not cats?" Dogs are considered one of the best models of human aging.
We've co-evolved with dogs. We've shared an environment with them for tens of thousands thousands of years, they develop the same age-related diseases we do at approximately the same time in our lifespan. The other really big reason why I decided to work on explicitly dog lifespan extension is because if we find a drug that potentially does extend healthspan and does extend lifespan, we can actually see it work in a relatively short period of time, unlike people, which, you know, would take decades, or even cats, which would also take decades considering cats can live to 20+.
So one of the things that I find strange is that life extension is a bit of a heretical idea to a lot of people.
Yeah, so it's really interesting, right? Because it really depends how you frame the problem. Nobody questions, obviously, a drug that you give a cancer patient. That, of course, the goal of all these drugs is to extend our lifespan. It's just at the very, very end of it. But when you formulate it as just like, we're targeting aging in general or targeting human disease in general, That's just a much more ambiguous thing that then opens up a ton of questions of like, well, is it ethical to extend lifespan? Or does this make sense? Or, you know, how are we thinking about this problem? Is it natural? An age-related disease by definition develops over time. You don't develop an age-related cancer overnight. You develop it over decades. But we target these diseases at the very end stage when they're the worst. And of course it is worthy and we will always continue to work on drugs for diseases of that stage. But it is crazy to me that right now in the structure in which the incentives are aligned, encourage and almost mandate us to work on the hardest stage of that disease. That is a much, much harder problem than having, you know, a clump of cancer cells that are starting to form 20 years before. So actually, really, all I'm working on is preventative medicine for age-related diseases. Instead of waiting for somebody to develop the disease and then have to treat them for it, why don't you delay or reduce their probability to develop it at all? And honestly, it's actually much more effective and much better for the patient, and relatively speaking, an easier biological problem. I think there's a number of assumptions that people have that are incorrect or at least should be tried. I think that's like actually honestly the hardest thing, or one of the hardest things about working on a heretical idea is you just have to be okay with that. If you are working on something so ambitious and so potentially impactful of how people live, you will have the people who are really excited about it and you'll have the people who are really not excited about it. You're always going to have that really strong dichotomy. There's not a direct link between getting something approved for and getting it approved for humans. But if we're successful in getting this first-ever aging approval through the veterinary FDA, we can set a precedent for this at least being like somewhat possible, right? That like this isn't as heretical as it might seem. And if we succeed in that, we'll hopefully broadly enable the rest of the aging field, which is really the goal. Because again, more aging drugs is only better for everyone here. You must be so sore crouching there.
Oh, it's all right. I'm like a catcher. As soon as my knees are gone, my career's over. I'll work on that first. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
