Rewriting the K9 Code: How Gene Editing Is Crafting Hypoallergenic Companions

For millennia, humanity has sought to forge the ideal canine companion. We have refined their abilities for specific tasks, from retrieving waterfowl to herding sheep. We have sculpted their bodies into sausage-shaped dachshunds, polka-dotted Dalmatians, bushy-browed schnauzers, and deeply wrinkled Shar-Peis.

And we have achieved this through nothing more sophisticated than traditional selective breeding.

Now, canine engineering is entering a new frontier. Earlier this month, Kindred Companion Sciences, a New York-based biotech startup, announced that it had utilized CRISPR to create the first gene-edited, hypoallergenic dogs. Through a single genetic modification, these two undeniably adorable beagles appear incapable of producing a protein that triggers red eyes and wheezing in some individuals.

However, the journey from the laboratory to the laps of American pet owners remains lengthy. (It has been two and a half years since scientists announced a gene-edited, hypoallergenic cat, yet such felines are still not available to the public.) Experts assert that more time and data are necessary to verify whether Kindred has truly fulfilled its promise of hypoallergenic dogs. Can a single gene edit reliably prevent allergic reactions in humans?

An even more pressing question arises: What does this mean for the dogs themselves? Will our pursuit of convenience result in unintended health consequences for them?

History provides little reassurance. Since the Victorian era, when dog enthusiasts began establishing and codifying modern breeds, our quest for the perfect pooch has yielded animals that are inbred, disease-prone, and burdened with extreme physical traits—such as super flat faces and ultra-long backs—that compromise their well-being.

“We have inadvertently created an enormous number of inherited diseases in dogs, often due to our pursuit of certain traits that appeal to us,” stated Rowena Packer, a companion animal welfare expert at the Royal Veterinary College in London. “I believe we bear a significant responsibility to think more critically about the dogs we create.”

Dog design

Despite the canine diversity achieved through selective breeding, a truly hypoallergenic dog remains something of a holy grail. Breeders have developed various low-shedding and purportedly hypoallergenic dogs, such as the labradoodle and its many descendants. Yet, these dogs still produce proteins secreted through their skin, saliva, and urine that can trigger human allergies.

Gene editing offers a “simple, elegant” solution at the source, according to Matt Walker, co-founder and CEO of Kindred, who has suffered from dog allergies his entire life.

Kindred started with canine cells, using CRISPR to disable a gene known as Can f 1, which codes for one of the primary canine allergens. The scientists then employed a basic cloning technique to transfer the edited genomes from these cells into dog embryos. They implanted the embryos into a surrogate beagle mother, who gave birth to two puppies: Alfie and Bailey, now nearly two years old.

The company has detected no trace of the allergen in either dog, and Dr. Walker, who adopted Bailey, has experienced no allergic reactions. (Alfie was adopted by one of Dr. Walker’s colleagues.) The dogs appear to be developing normally.

“No red flags, no yellow flags—so far, the animals seem completely healthy,” Dr. Walker said. “That said,” he added, “this is the starting point of our work.”

Indeed, for all its purported precision, gene editing can have unpredictable consequences. Medical issues might emerge later in the dogs’ lives, or when the company scales up production to the point where rare side effects can be detected.

Or, of course, they could turn out to be perfectly healthy. But it is too soon to say, and we will likely see more efforts to create gene-edited dogs in the future. Where do we wish to draw our ethical boundaries?

Thirty years ago, when genetic engineering was in its infancy, philosopher Bernard Rollin proposed an ethical principle he termed the “conservation of welfare,” which held that we should not modify animal genomes in ways that left the animals “worse off, in terms of suffering” than their unmodified ancestors.

That is a sensible starting point. However, it is a low bar. Furthermore, it does not address all the ethical implications of creating gene-edited dogs, which may require using additional animals as test subjects, egg donors, and surrogate mothers.

“I think we sometimes get so excited about what technology can fix, particularly biotechnology—we must remember that, generally, we use a lot of animals to reach that end ‘product,'” said Dr. Lisa Moses, a veterinarian and bioethicist at Harvard University.

Ethicists have also questioned whether we should bring gene-edited dogs into a world that already has more dogs than it can care for, especially when the goal is not to create a healthier animal, but one that better serves our human needs.

“Should we use sophisticated biotechnology to create the animals we want, rather than changing how we relate to the animals who already exist?” asked Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “That is a question of priorities, and perhaps misplaced priorities.”

Dr. Walker sees it differently. He stated that his allergies would prevent him from ever adopting a shelter dog; gene editing is the only thing that has made it possible for him to have a relationship with dogs. “I am also deeply invested in applying this work to service dogs for people who are allergic,” he said.

“People’s ethical barometers are set differently,” he added. “For me, this feels justified by the potential benefits, as long as animal health is protected.”

Good breeding

Dog lovers can, in good faith, come down on different sides of the Kindred question. However, if we are going to discuss the ethics of dog creation, experts agreed, we need to ask ourselves some difficult questions—not just about our new gene-editing tools, but also about our longstanding breeding practices.

“At the end of the day, they are both producing animals for companion purposes,” said Alison Van Eenennaam, an expert on animal genomics and biotechnology at the University of California, Davis. “It is not the technology itself that is creating the ethical issues.”

We have done plenty of harm without modern biotechnology. And there are ways to use gene editing to improve canine lives—even, in some cases, to undo some of the damage done through selective breeding. In a 2022 study, scientists demonstrated that it was technically possible to use gene editing to “correct” a genetic mutation associated with hip problems in Labrador retrievers.

However, these hip problems stem from a variety of risk factors—both genetic and environmental—and most canine health conditions probably cannot be cured by editing just one gene, experts said.

Improving dog welfare will likely require an array of complementary approaches. These include revising breed standards, opening up closed breeding pools, performing widespread genetic screening, and educating the public about the welfare costs of breeding dogs with certain physical traits.

Experts have been calling for these reforms for years, with limited success. But they are necessary if we want to bring our behavior in line with the values we claim to hold. We are, after all, a society so besotted with dogs that we have startups trying to develop canine longevity drugs—and editing genes so that people can live alongside creatures that would otherwise give them hives.

Life with Bailey has been “amazing,” Dr. Walker said. “I didn’t really appreciate, when people say pets are part of your family, what that really means. But she truly is a part of our family.”

His wife had grown up with dogs, he added, and had long bemoaned his allergies. “She always said that this was the one thing she wished she could change about me,” he said.

Indeed, as news of Kindred’s hypoallergenic dogs spread across the internet this month, one Facebook commenter raised precisely that possibility: “Why doesn’t he alter himself instead of the beagles?”

Alas, we cannot yet edit dog allergies out of our own genomes. But that does not mean we cannot evolve.

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