Copyright The Boston Globe
“Colossal gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog,” Brady said, as part of the news that Colossal acquired Viagen, a Texas-based company specializing in cloning pets. In his statement, the former Patriots QB identified himself as an investor in Colossal, which calls itself a “de-extinction company.” The company is perhaps best known for genetically engineering wolf pups earlier this year that may resemble dire wolves that went extinct more than 10,000 years ago. Colossal, which launched in 2021, says it aims to bring back extinct species like the woolly mammoth and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a large carnivorous marsupial that officially went extinct in 1936. Junie, Brady’s young dog, has the same coloring and markings as Lua, the pet that Brady and ex-wife Gisele Bündchen adopted more than a decade ago. During the 2010s, Brady was regularly spotted walking Lua along the Charles River, and in recent years on Florida’s Indian Creek Island, where he has a home. Brady said Tuesday that a sample of Lua’s DNA was taken through “a simple blood draw” a few months before she died. “I love my animals. They mean the world to me and my family. A few years ago, I worked with Colossal and leveraged their non-invasive cloning technology,” said Brady, adding that Junie was created via the cloning process “in a few short months.” Viagen, the company just acquired by Colossal, is known for cloning Paris Hilton’s dog Diamond and Barbra Streisand’s dog Samantha. Launched in 2002 in Austin, Texas, it says it holds exclusive licensing rights to technologies developed by the Roslin Institute of Edinburgh, best known for cloning Dolly the sheep.
