Allergic to Dogs? These Gene-Edited Beagles Could Pave the Way to Your Dream Canine Companion That Won't Trigger Sniffles

Dogs are famously humans’ best friend—except for humans who are allergic to dogs. For them, pup ownership can be an out-of-reach dream. Roughly one in eight people in the U.S. get sniffly when they’re around pooches.

If you’re one of them, don’t fret. You might one day be able to get a canine companion that lacks a major allergen. The young female beagles look like any other member of their breed, but they are actually the first of their kind.

Researchers at the company Kindred Companion Sciences edited the two animals’ genes using a Nobel Prize-winning technique to remove a common dog allergen. They detail their methods in a study published on August 5 in the CRISPR Journal. Kindred was co-founded by Matt Walker, a dog lover who unfortunately couldn’t be around the beloved animals.

They prevented me and my family from ever having a dog,” Walker, who is also the company’s CEO, tells New Scientist’s Michael Le Page. Around a year and a half ago, Walker brought home Bailey, who hasn’t triggered any allergic reactions. That’s because Walker, a geneticist, and his colleagues used the DNA-editing tool CRISPR to turn off the gene that codes for the allergy-inducing protein Can f 1.

To do that, they took skin cells from a beagle, edited the cells’ Can f 1 genes, then cloned the cells. The altered DNA was put into donated egg cells, resulting in 25 reconstructed embryos that were inserted in a beagle surrogate. She gave birth to Bailey and Alfie in September 2024.

The team didn’t find traces of the Can f 1 protein in the gene-edited dogs’ saliva or dander. The allergen was detected, however, in samples from a regular beagle and dogs of two breeds marketed as hypoallergenic: a poodle and a goldendoodle. What’s more, Walker went through skin-prick allergy testing with samples from all the dogs.