Calico Life Sciences LLC is an American

biotechnology company Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists in the field are kn ...

with a focus on the biology of aging, attempting to devise interventions that may enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. It is a subsidiary of

Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Alphabet is the world's third-largest technology company by revenue, after Amazon and Apple, the largest techno ...

History

Calico, short for the California Life Company, was announced on September 18, 2013, prior to Google's restructuring and was founded by former GV CEO Bill Maris. In Google's 2013 Founders Letter,

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer engineer and computer scientist best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when ...

described Calico as a company focused on "health, well-being, and

longevity Longevity may refer to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas ''life expectancy'' is defined Statistics, statistically as the average number of years remaining at a given age. For example, a population's life expectancy at birth ...

." It was incorporated into Alphabet with Google's other sister divisions in 2015. The Calico team has included a number of pioneering researchers in the field of aging research, including members of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

Cynthia Kenyon Cynthia Jane Kenyon (born February 21, 1954) is an American molecular biologist and biogerontologist known for her genetic dissection of aging in a widely used model organism, the roundworm ''Caenorhabditis elegans''. She is the vice president of ...

and Daniel E. Gottschling. Some of the company’s earliest employees included the geneticist David Botstein, and cancer drug developer Robert L. Cohen, MD.,

Eric Verdin Eric M. Verdin is a Belgian geroscientist, researcher, and professor who has served as President and chief executive officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging since 2016. Verdin’s research focuses on metabolism, diet, and the differe ...

, CEO of The Buck Institute for Research on Aging, served as a consultant to the Calico team. At the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, Calico lost two top scientists; in December 2017

Hal Barron Hal V. Barron (born 1962) is an American clinician-scientist and drug developer who served as president of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline from March 2018 until 2022, when he resigned in order to join the cellular reprogramming ventur ...

, MD, its head of R&D, left for

GlaxoSmithKline GSK plc (an acronym from its former name GlaxoSmithKline plc) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with headquarters in London. It was established in 2000 by a Mergers an ...

, and in March 2018 chief computing officer

Daphne Koller Daphne Koller (; born August 27, 1968) is an Israeli-American computer scientist. She was a professor in the department of computer science at Stanford University and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient. She is one of the founders of Cour ...

, who was leading their

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of techniques in computer science, data analysis, mathematical modeling and Computer simulation, computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer sci ...

efforts, left to pursue a venture in applying machine learning techniques to drug design.

Partnerships

In September 2014, Calico and

AbbVie AbbVie Inc. is an American pharmaceutical company headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois. It is ranked sixth on the list of largest biomedical companies by revenue. In 2023, the company's seat in Forbes Global 2000 was 74, and rank 89 on the ...

announced an R&D collaboration focused on

aging Ageing (or aging in American English) is the process of becoming Old age, older until death. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi; whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentiall ...

and age-related diseases such as

neurodegeneration A neurodegenerative disease is caused by the progressive loss of neurons, in the process known as neurodegeneration. Neuronal damage may also ultimately result in their cell death, death. Neurodegenerative diseases include amyotrophic lateral sc ...

and

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

. Working together with AbbVie, Calico pursues discovery-stage research and development. AbbVie provides scientific and clinical development support and lends its expertise to commercialization activities. To date, the companies have committed to invest more than $1 billion into the collaboration. In 2015, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced a partnership with Calico to "advance research on age-related diseases and therapeutics", a further partnership also was announced with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Also in 2015, Calico announced a partnership with QB3 based on researching the biology of aging and identifying potential therapeutics for age-related diseases and one with

AncestryDNA Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. It is owned by The ...

based on conducting research into the genetics of human lifespan. In October 2023, ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'', a weekly British scientific journal, published preclinical research findings that showed ABBV-CLS-484, a PTPN2/N1

phosphatase In biochemistry, a phosphatase is an enzyme that uses water to cleave a phosphoric acid Ester, monoester into a phosphate ion and an Alcohol (chemistry), alcohol. Because a phosphatase enzyme catalysis, catalyzes the hydrolysis of its Substrate ...

inhibitor being co-developed by

and Calico, provokes a potent dual response in cancer and immune cells only in mice.

Reception

When Calico was formed, Google did not disclose many details, such as whether the company would focus on biology or information technology. The company issued press releases about research partnerships, but not details regarding the results of its research or the specifics of what it was working on. This led to frustration by researchers regarding Calico's secrecy and questions as to whether Calico had produced any useful scientific advancements. Calico said the business' purpose was to focus on long-term science not expected to garner results for 10 or more years, leaving nothing to report on in its first five years.

References

{{Life extension, state=collapsed GV companies Biogerontology organizations Health care companies based in California Biotechnology companies of the United States Life sciences industry Life extension organizations American companies established in 2013 Biotechnology companies established in 2013 Alphabet Inc. 2013 establishments in California Companies based in South San Francisco, California Alphabet Inc. subsidiaries

History

Partnerships

Reception

See also

References