Jaguar Health has secured a $240,000 grant from the US Food and Drug Administration to push forward research on a treatment for chemotherapy-induced diarrhea in dogs, a common and often dangerous side effect of cancer care.

 

The company said it received notice on January 1 from the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine that the funding will support its ongoing effectiveness study of Canalevia-CA1, which is currently conditionally approved for chemotherapy-induced diarrhea (CID) in dogs.

 

“As announced on December 10, 2025, the FDA granted renewal of the conditional approval for Canalevia-CA1 for a fifth and final year, through December 21, 2026, for the treatment of CID in dogs. In order to receive a full veterinary drug approval for the indication of CID, Jaguar must complete and file a successful effectiveness study,” said Michael Guy, Jaguar’s Vice President of Preclinical and Nonclinical Studies.

 

Dogs receiving chemotherapy are considered a key predictive model for understanding how cancer treatments cause diarrhea in humans. Many drugs used in canine cancer care are identical to, or work the same way as, human cancer therapies—leading to similar side effects across species.

 

The need is significant. According to the American Veterinary Medical Foundation, there were about 90 million dogs in the US in 2024, with Jaguar estimating that more than 11 million suffer from general diarrhea each year. In Europe, the European Pet Food Industry Federation reported approximately 104 million dogs in 2022.

 

Jaguar emphasized that Canalevia is not an antibiotic, a distinction that matters as overuse of antibiotics in both humans and animals continues to fuel drug-resistant bacteria.

 

Diarrhea remains one of the most common reasons dogs are taken to veterinarians and the second most frequent cause of visits to emergency veterinary hospitals. 

 

Despite its prevalence and the risk of rapid, life-threatening dehydration, there is still no FDA-approved treatment for general, non-infectious diarrhea in dogs—a gap Jaguar aims to help close as it advances Canalevia-CA1 toward full approval.