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

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.