In Episode 92 of Trending: Pet Food, host Lindsay Beaton speaks with Dr. Jennifer Radosevich from Hill’s Pet Nutrition about Darwin’s Cats, a collaborative research initiative addressing the historical underfunding of feline health research compared to canine studies. The project combines expertise from four leading institutions to create a comprehensive database of cat genetics, behavior, nutrition and health data from pet owners worldwide.This episode originally aired on August 6, 2025.
We want to thank AFB International for sponsoring this podcast. AFB is the premier supplier of palatants to pet food companies worldwide, offering off-the-shelf and custom solutions and services that make pet food treats and supplements taste great.
Lindsay Beaton, editor, Petfood Industry magazine and host, Trending: Pet Food podcast: Hello and welcome to Trending: Pet Food, the industry podcast where we cover all the latest hot topics and trends in pet food. I’m your host and editor of Petfood Industry magazine, Lindsay Beaton, and I’m here today with Dr. Jennifer Radosevich, senior vice president of research and innovation for Hill’s Pet Nutrition.
Hi Dr. Radosevich, and welcome!
Dr. Jennifer Radosevich, senior vice president of research and innovation for Hill’s Pet Nutrition: Hi Lindsay. Thanks for having me on.
Beaton: In case you’re unfamiliar with Dr. Radosevich or Hill’s, here’s what you need to know.
Dr. Radosevich is responsible for leading the early research team to develop and accelerate new technologies for Hill’s products. She oversees a diverse and talented team of scientists, engineers, and analysts who work collaboratively to create and test novel products, technologies, and processes that deliver superior performance and value for Hill’s customers and partners. Dr. Radosevich completed her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Iowa State University. She is a former Chair of the American Feed Industry Association and current Chair of the BioKansas organization, with over 25 years of industry experience leveraging innovation to further business goals in the agribusiness, human and pet food markets.
Founded more than 75 years ago with an unwavering commitment to science-led pet nutrition, Hill’s Pet Nutrition is on a mission to help enrich and lengthen the special relationships between people and their pets. Hill’s is dedicated to pioneering research for dogs and cats using a scientific understanding of their specific needs. As a leading veterinarian recommended pet food brand, knowledge is our first ingredient with nearly 200 veterinarians, Ph.D. nutritionists, and food scientists working to develop breakthrough innovations in pet health.
Dr. Radosevich’s years of research, industry experience, and position within Hill’s make her the perfect person to discuss a new cat-focused research initiative entering the pet space. We’re going to dive into today’s question: What is the Darwin’s Cats initiative, and what is it going to do for the pet food industry? Dr. Radosevich, I want to start with that very question, what is the Darwin’s Cats initiative?
Dr. Radosevich: Darwin’s Cats is a groundbreaking partnership driven by the need for more feline specific research, more specifically genetic research. Historically, we’ve focused a lot of resources on dogs and understanding dog genetics and how that interacts with different nutrition, different therapeutic modalities. We now want to focus more on feline Health Research. Historically, feline health research has been sorely underfunded compared to canine counterparts. The goal of this is to build the largest Open Access database of feline genetic and behavior information ever assembled.
Feline genetics, behavior, nutrition, what types of medications they’re on—really build this database so that we can understand a pet’s behavior and genetics with respect to health and disease. What we really want to do is we want to understand feline health, the genetic basis for that, and then what we can do to prolong the health span of these pets. The collaboration combines expertise in four leading institutes.
The first, of course, is Darwin’s Ark. Darwin’s Ark brings its community powered research platform and strong community connections. They’ve done this in dogs with the Darwin’s Dogs initiative, and now we’re starting the Darwin’s cat initiative. They’ve built basically the research platform and foundation to be able to reach out to many cat pet parents to be able to gather this information.
Hill’s pet nutrition, of course, we bring decades of experience applying genomics research and genetics research to our science-based nutrition approaches so that we can improve the health of companion animals.
Then the third one is the Broad Institute, they bring their cutting-edge technology and proven record of accelerating genetic and genomic discoveries utilizing their computational biology approaches. All the information, the genetic information that Darwin’s Ark is going to capture, they’re going to be able to utilize their computational biology techniques to better understand what’s going on.
Then the fourth and last partner is UMass Chan Medical School. They bring their research hub that combines medical and comparative genomics to enhance scientific understanding of human diseases. They’re going to use those same approaches to understand pet diseases. With those four partners building this largest Open Access database of feline genetic information and associated information is really the goal to revolutionize and understand cat health and then inform the development of effective diagnostic tools, preventative strategies and targeted therapies, including nutrition, to create healthier, happier lives for our feline companions.
Beaton: 2024 was kind of a big year for cats. In the pet food space, there were a lot of new products, and there has been a lot of chatter over the last year and a half that cats are finally getting their due — that companies are starting to realize that cat owners want all the same opportunities for their cats that dog owners want for their dogs. You mentioned that traditionally, cat research pales in comparison to dog research. Why is that?
Dr. Radosevich: First, I think we had to come to the realization that cats are not small dogs. 20 years ago, we would say, “Okay, we’ll do it in dogs. We’ll understand what’s going on in dogs, and then we’ll just go ahead and roll out those technologies to cats.” They’re not. Then, recognizing that there’s been a recent rise in feline ownership, we have the need for dedicated feline resources.
What we did in 2024—again, you mentioned 2024 has been an exciting year—Hill’s formed the cat advisory team, which is C, A, T, and we released our inaugural global cat report. This feline focused research, including this continued work on the feline genome, is going to empower veterinary health care teams with the knowledge and resources that are very specific to cats, so they can provide exceptional care for cats. Darwin’s Cats is a continuation of this work, and we’ll be able to really expand that knowledge base so that we can be very specific to the cat needs for nutrition, behavior and beyond.
Beaton: How did Hill’s get involved in this to begin with? Was Hill’s involved from the start? Did Darwin’s Ark launch this and say, “Hey, we need other partners?” How did this group of four come together and come to include Hill’s?
Dr. Radosevich: That’s a great question. Darwin’s Ark started out with Darwin’s Dogs. Again, historically, we’ve always just started with dogs and then thought about cats secondarily, which is unfortunate, but they had experience in reaching out to dog pet parents to be able to gather genetic information, in addition to other behavioral nutrition information. Hill’s has been doing genetic research for more than a decade, and we’ve decided, you know, we really need to up our game in feline genetics research.
Knowing that Darwin’s Ark had been particularly successful with Darwin’s Dogs in gathering genetic and other information, and knowing that Darwin’s Ark likely would be interested in a concomitant Darwin’s Cats initiative, we just reached out to each other and said, “Hey, what can we do in this space?” We’ve been doing a lot of genetics research, including donating feline genetic data to the Morris Animal Foundation. We have experience in understanding how to work with different partners to be able to further feline research. When we decided to do this, we thought, “Okay, let’s figure out what we can do with Darwin’s Ark.”
Darwin’s Cats can utilize the same type of reach out that we did for Darwin’s Dogs. They use an innovative community science model. It’s cat parents — it’s pet parents to be able to gather large scale genetic and behavioral data.
The other thing that I’m really excited about is we’re all familiar with gathering DNA from a dog. It’s a cheek swab, right? Most dogs, you can get them to be able to do a cheek swab. Cats less so, right? They’re not really thrilled with having a swab put in their mouth. What Darwin’s Cats was able to do was utilize a very small comb, and you can just comb your cat a little bit to get a little bit of fur, then you give that sample. It’s much more cat friendly. It’s much more pet friendly. Again, focused on the cat rather than a “cat is a small dog.” It’s very noninvasive DNA collection. We also have lots of surveys that pet parents can share more about their cat and the like.
We really wanted to partner with Darwin’s Ark to be able to get this information much more specifically for cats, so that the pet industry can benefit from these efforts. Keep in mind this is data that is going to be available to the whole pet industry. This is a public community research effort that Hill’s is partnering with, but it’s going to be available to the whole pet industry so that we can enable deeper insights into feline health and behavior to pave the way for better veterinary care and targeted nutritional solutions.
Beaton: I want to talk about that a little more because it’s fascinating that this is all going to be publicly available, and I think that the fact that that is going to be the end result is what makes the scope so impressive — that you want everybody to participate, and it’s going to provide so much data. What sorts of information specifically is going to be the focus in gathering information and research through this initiative? Then, how do you think it’s going to help the pet food space?
Dr. Radosevich: What we’re really trying to do is to take a holistic approach, by integrating not only the genetic information, but integrating that with behavioral information, activity information, health metrics, medical information, whatever the pet parent wants to share about their cat, because it’s got to be a holistic approach. It’s not just genetics, right? Your genes, they tell something about you. They tell you that, oh, you may, at some point develop diabetes. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to develop diabetes. It means that you have a propensity to develop diabetes. There are other things you can do, such as exercise, nutrition and the like, to be able to modify your propensity to develop whatever condition you are.
We’re interested in determining that and understanding comprehensive data on cat nutrition, lifestyles and health conditions. Once we gather all this data, we want to be able to make connections and correlations between genetics and many of these other different aspects of cat health. This is going to enable researchers to analyze the complex interactions between all these components — genetics, nutrition, and environment. Really the goal is to understand how genetics influences a cat’s needs throughout its life.
Obviously, Hill’s is interested in the pet food space. We’re interested in enhancing our understanding about how food impacts feline health, and how that interaction with feline genetics, what the genes say and have a propensity, how we can modify perhaps that trajectory with nutrition. Perhaps we can enable and inform the future development of personalized nutrition plans that are tailored to individual cats based on their genetic makeup, and then, of course, supporting further research on how to mitigate the genetic predisposition of certain health conditions.
Because this is a public information and data activity, others in the pet industry that are interested in therapeutics, interested in diagnostics, interested in veterinary care, can utilize this information for things outside of the nutrition space as well, including different diagnostics for genetics, for perhaps a pet’s age, a pet’s propensity to develop renal conditions and the like. Really looking at it holistically, we’ll be able to provide better insights into cats and better preventative mechanisms and better diagnostic and therapeutic mechanisms.
Beaton: Now I think it’s every researcher’s hope that the research they do is going to provide some groundbreaking new insight that nobody had any idea of or nobody had a clue about. Do you think that’s likely to happen with something like this, or is the information more going to be confirmation and refinement of things that we already know about cat genetics and health and nutrition?
Dr. Radosevich: What I would say to that is our level of understanding about cat genetics with respect to health is not there yet. I must believe that we’re going to be discovering things that we hadn’t known prior to that, and that is the goal, really. This is a different way of doing research with respect to cats.
The traditional research methods would be — okay, we have a hypothesis that we will be able to affect a cat’s trajectory of renal disease by this particular nutrition or by this particular pharmaceutical therapeutic. We’ll take 20 cats, and we’ll feed them this nutrition, or we’ll give them this therapeutic, and we’ll see what that trajectory looks like, right? That’s a traditional research method. For this community source method, population method, it’s totally different. We need many cats — hundreds of thousands of cats — to be able to understand their genetics, understand what their nutrition is, understand what medications they’re on, and then once we analyze that data, we can really discover novel ways in which a cat’s genetics, behavior and health interact. Once we understand those interactions, we’ll be able to really discover more things.
That’s really, I think, the power of this study — it’s a different way of studying cats, and we’ll anticipate really discovering things that we didn’t know about cats before. Will there be some confirmation? Yeah, I have to believe that we’re going to find things that we knew before, and that’ll be actually very, frankly, validating of this approach, because if we find things that we know — “Oh, there it is, yep, we knew that” — then that will really underscore some of the new discoveries and be able to speak to what we can do in the future.
Beaton: With a big project, I’m assuming it’s going to take a while to hit completion. Where in the process is the initiative at right now, and how long is each stage going to last, and what’s the next stage after whatever stage is being worked on right now?
Dr. Radosevich: We’re really excited to, again, get the word out so that we want to make sure that we have as many cats participating. If you have a cat, or if you’re a veterinarian and you have cats or clients with cats, we really encourage you to participate. Having said that, Darwin’s Cats have already hit big milestones. We have over 13,000 cats enrolled in the program with a million survey responses collected. We’re really excited about that. Our goal is to enroll 100,000 cats and obtain 5000 DNA sequences by the end of 2026. Yes, this is a long game, but the better we get the word out, the shorter time we’ll be able to get the information and get the cats enrolled.
What we’re really doing is focusing on revolutionizing our understanding of feline health so that we can lead to breakthroughs in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of feline health conditions and diseases. What can we do with this? Again, not only nutrition, which Hill’s is interested in, but once we get many cats, we would anticipate that we could use this foundational research of the cat genome to translate that knowledge into targeted health condition and disease treatments. Again, improve diagnostic accuracy. If we can identify genetic markers associated with specific health conditions for cats, the targeted therapies, we could develop novel treatments, we can develop novel nutrition that address perhaps more of the root cause of some of these conditions. Preventative strategies, right? Again, if you identify a genetic predisposition, you can make choices for proactive interventions and personalized preventative cares that can mitigate that risk. Then on the therapeutic side, optimize drug selection and dosage understanding, perhaps individual variations in drug responses.
We know that genetics can also dictate how well or not you will respond to a particular treatment. We’re really believing in this powerful community science model to accelerate the pace of discovery and help us address some of these multifactorial health conditions like kidney disease, diabetes, certain cancers that are not just one gene and done conditions. They arise from complex interactions between many genes, the environment and potentially nutrition. That’s our goal. It’s a long-term research goal. It will take some time to gather this information, but we anticipate the dividends will pay out, particularly for cat health in the future.
Beaton: At the end of this episode, we’re going to provide all the information the audience might need to figure out where to go to register their own cats or get more information about it. Hang in there, audience, we’re going to tell you where you can go and get everybody involved as we wrap up the conversation.
Hill’s is obviously really focused on the nutrition aspect, and there’s a lot of information that is likely to come out about this that will basically refine the industry and allow everybody access to the ability to refine their nutrition and their products for cats. What are you most interested in finding out, personally? Is there a part of this that you are just really excited about diving into the data once it’s all in?
Dr. Radosevich: Again, we really hope that the genetic insights we compile from this research is going to lead to more preventative strategies, earlier diagnosis, earlier understanding of what’s going on with the cat’s health. That’s going to empower both veterinarians and pet owners to be able to take proactive steps, to have actionable information that you can act on sooner rather than later.
Veterinarians are going to be essential partners on this ongoing research. I actively encourage veterinarian clients to enroll their cats in Darwin’s Ark, to contribute to this database. But we have some early findings from surveys, not even just the genetics. One of those challenges are long held stereotypes about cats being aloof. Very frankly, they have a lot deeper affection for their human companions than you realize. Cats, according to our surveys, are not inherently more aloof than dogs, but they’re instead very highly affectionate, especially with their human family members. This is one example of an insight that’s going to be crucial for better understanding of cat human bonds and enhancing feline health. Stay tuned. We really are excited about what this information is going to be able to do to help veterinarians and pet parents to make more informed decisions about their cat’s health.
Beaton: Excellent. Dr. Radosevich, I want to thank you for coming on and giving some airtime to this initiative, especially now with the cat space continuing to grow and getting acknowledgement that it’s continuing to grow in the pet food space. I think it makes sense to really dive into researching these animals and hopefully find connections we’ve never noticed before, as well as confirming some of the things that — I’m a cat owner myself — that cat owners have already known and been saying for years. It’s very exciting stuff, and I’m glad you were on to talk about it today. Thank you.
Before we go, this is particularly important for this episode, I want to do a plug about where people can find more information about you and Hill’s Pet Nutrition, of course, but also where can they go to find more information about Darwin’s Cat and enroll their cats into the project for Hill’s?
Dr. Radosevich: You can always look up hillspet.com which is our Hill’s website, so you can find out about our wellness and therapeutic foods. But more importantly, for this effort, pet parents can go to darwinsark.org and if you click on our research, or you just click around the website, you can click on Darwin’s Dogs if you have a dog. But I especially encourage our cat pet parents to click on Darwin’s Cats, and there, what you’ll see is the opportunity to sign up your cat for this initiative.
Signing up is free. Participating in all the surveys are free. If you’d like your cat’s DNA to be sequenced and added to the sequences for genetic research, you can sign that up as well. There is a fee of about $125 to do that, and that would be a donation to the Darwin’s Ark foundation. We are looking at how we can defer the cost for 2026 to have additional participants. If that’s something that you can’t do now, check back. We are working to try to get some of the sequencing costs defrayed so that we can have more participants.
But really, this is a true citizen science collaboration from cat pet parents, cat veterinarians — we really call on you to be able to share more information about your cat or cats, so that we can understand more about the interplay between genetics, activity, behavior information, nutrition information, so that we can address the unique needs of cats in the future.
Beaton: That’s it for this episode of Trending: Pet Food. You can find us on Petfood Industry, SoundCloud or your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow us on Instagram @trendingpetfoodpodcast. If you want to chat or have any feedback I’d love to hear from you, feel free to drop me an email [email protected].
Of course, thanks again to our sponsor, AFB International, the premier supplier of palatants to pet food companies worldwide, offering off-the-shelf and custom solutions and services that make pet food, treats and supplements taste great.
Once again, I’m Lindsay Beaton, your host and editor of Petfood Industry magazine, and we’ll talk to you next time. Thanks for tuning in!