Two beagles named Bailey and Alfie can perform tricks like any other dog, but they lack the protein that causes allergic reactions in most dog allergy sufferers. The animals are the result of years of research at Kindred Companion Sciences, a biotech firm that came out of stealth mode this week. In a scientific paper released Wednesday in The Crispr Journal, the company's founder Matt Walker and colleagues describe how they used gene editing to eliminate an allergy-causing protein from the dogs.
The Kindred team used Crispr to disable the gene producing Can f 1—the protein responsible for reactions in over half of people with dog allergies—in skin cells taken from a female beagle. Using somatic cell nuclear transfer, they injected the edited cells into donor beagle eggs. After generating 25 embryos carrying the Can f 1 gene edit, they implanted them in a surrogate. Two embryos reached full term, producing two puppies with normal birth weights and no birth defects. DNA sequencing verified the edit was present, and samples of the dogs' saliva and dander showed no detectable Can f 1 protein, while samples from non-edited dogs including a beagle, poodle, and golden doodle all showed clear Can f 1 signals. A skin prick test on Walker himself showed drops from the edited dog produced no skin response, while drops from a non-edited dog did cause a reaction.
Walker has lived with Bailey for the past year and a half without experiencing any allergic reactions. "She's just brought so much joy and activity and community into my life," he says of Bailey. The company began with beagles due to their use in animal research but plans to expand to additional breeds, with particular interest in creating allergy-free service dogs. According to Walker, the goal is to produce "founder animals" through cloning that could then be bred to generate more dogs lacking the allergen. Gene editing expert Fyodor Urnov from UC Berkeley endorsed this application of Crispr, stating that "Dogs are a human's best friend, now potentially more so because of one tiny gene edit."
This isn't the first effort to create allergen-free pets through gene editing. Researchers from Virginia-based InBio published a study on using Crispr to edit the main allergen in cat cells a few years ago, though they didn't produce any gene-edited cats. A group in South Korea did produce a gene-edited cat named Alsik in 2024, which had "extremely low" levels of the cat allergen Fel d 1 compared to typical felines. The Kindred team checked for off-target edits—unintended changes elsewhere in the genome—and found none. Alfie and Bailey will continue receiving regular veterinary examinations for the rest of their lives. Walker says the company isn't interested in using gene editing for "novelty" or "cosmetic" purposes, though a Texas firm called Embryo Corporation is working to engineer glow-in-the-dark rabbits and actual unicorns. Walker didn't provide a timeline for when the allergy-free dogs will become commercially available. The technology could also address health problems in dogs caused by breeding while preserving the rest of a breed's characteristics. For pet ownership to expand beyond those who can tolerate allergens, the question becomes whether engineered animals will gain the same regulatory and public acceptance that therapeutic gene editing has begun to achieve. The broader challenge lies in determining which applications of gene editing in companion animals serve legitimate needs versus crossing into enhancement territory that regulators and ethicists may view differently.