Tom Brady has revealed that his dog, Junie, is a genetic clone of his late pit bull mix, Lua, who died in December 2023. 

The former NFL quarterback shared the information on Nov. 4, coinciding with an announcement from Colossal Biosciences, the Dallas-based biotechnology firm that carried out the cloning process. Brady is an investor in the company.

According to Colossal, Lua was cloned using blood samples collected before her death, People reported.

The company partnered with Viagen Pets and Equine, a biotechnology firm recently acquired by Colossal, to complete the process. Viagen has carried out cloning projects for celebrity owners, among them Barbra Streisand's dog Samantha, who died in 2017, and Paris Hilton's dog Diamond Baby, who went missing in 2022.

"I love my animals. They mean the world to me and my family," Brady said in a statement. 

"A few years ago, I worked with Colossal and leveraged their non-invasive cloning technology through a simple blood draw of our family's elderly dog before she passed," he said.

"The company gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog. I'm excited how Colossal and Viagen's tech together can help both families losing their beloved pets while helping to save endangered species."

Colossal gained attention earlier this year for claiming to have produced three dire wolf pups as part of its work in "de-extinction," a process aimed at reviving extinct species through advanced genetic methods, The New York Times reported. 

Colossal's purchase of Viagen gives the company access to cloning technology developed at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, best known for creating Dolly the sheep in 1996.

Since the cloning of Dolly, scientists have replicated dozens of animal species using similar techniques. The first dog clone was reported by South Korean researchers in 2005. 

Viagen says it has since cloned 15 species, including endangered animals such as the black-footed ferret and Przewalski's horse, a rare Mongolian breed.

Preserving a pet's genetic material costs $1,600, while cloning a dog or cat costs $50,000, the Times reported.

Streisand, whose cloned dogs came from her late pet Samantha, wrote in 2018 that she began the process before the animal's death. 

"I just wanted to keep her with me in some way," she wrote. "It was easier to let Sammie go if I knew I could keep some part of her alive, something that came from her DNA."