Mars Petcare is seeking 10,000 dogs and 10,000 cats for a biobank — an aggregation of biological samples, images, and other data — that aims to improve house pets’ health by detecting earlier maladies.
Compared with human biobanking, animal biobanking is in its infancy. This initiative may be the largest and most ambitious so far to try to pinpoint what triggers disease in healthy pets by sifting through genomic patterns.
“The overall aim is to improve pet care of the future and health outcomes, and to improve the health span and quality of life of our pets,” says Kay O’Donnell, vice president of the Waltham Petcare Science Institute, a division of Mars Petcare.
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