Calico (company)

Last updated
Calico Life Sciences LLC
Company type Subsidiary
Industry
FoundedSeptember 18, 2013;10 years ago (2013-09-18)
Founder Bill Maris
HeadquartersU.S, ,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Arthur D. Levinson ( CEO )
Parent Google (2013–2015)
Alphabet Inc. (2015–present)
Website calicolabs.com

Calico Life Sciences LLC is biotechnology company 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.

Contents

History

Calico, short for the California Life Company, [1] [2] was announced on September 18, 2013, prior to Google's restructuring and was founded by former GV CEO Bill Maris. [3] [4] In Google's 2013 Founders Letter, Larry Page described Calico as a company focused on "health, well-being, and longevity." [5] It was incorporated into Alphabet with Google's other sister divisions in 2015. [6] [7]

The Calico team has included a number of pioneering researchers in the field of ageing research, including members of the National Academy of Sciences, Cynthia Kenyon and Daniel E. Gottschling. [8] Some of the company’s earliest employees included the geneticist David Botstein, and cancer drug developer Robert L. Cohen, MD., [9] Eric Verdin, CEO of The Buck Institute for Research on Aging, served as a consultant to the Calico team. [10]

At the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, Calico lost two top scientists; in December 2017 Hal Barron, MD, its head of R&D, left for GlaxoSmithKline, and in March 2018 chief computing officer Daphne Koller, who was leading their computational biology efforts, left to pursue a venture in applying machine learning techniques to drug design. [11] [12] [13]

Partnerships

In September 2014, Calico and AbbVie announced an R&D collaboration focused on aging and age-related diseases such as neurodegeneration and cancer. [14] Working together with AbbVie, Calico pursues discovery-stage research and development utilizing state-of-the-art technology and advanced computing capabilities. [15] AbbVie provides scientific and clinical development support and lends its expertise to commercialization activities. [15] To date, the companies have committed to invest more than $1 billion into the collaboration. [16] [ citation needed ]

In 2015, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced a partnership with Calico to "advance research on age-related diseases and therapeutics", [17] a further partnership also was announced with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. [18] Also in 2015, Calico announced a partnership with QB3 based on researching the biology of aging and identifying potential therapeutics for age-related diseases [19] and one with AncestryDNA based on conducting research into the genetics of human lifespan. [20]

In October 2023, Nature , a weekly British scientific journal, published preclinical research findings that showed ABBV-CLS-484, a PTPN2/N1 phosphatase inhibitor being co-developed by AbbVie and Calico, provokes a potent dual response in cancer and immune cells. [21] [22] [23]

Reception

When Calico was formed, Google did not disclose many details, such as whether the company would focus on biology or information technology. [24] 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. [2] [25] This led to frustration by researchers regarding Calico's secrecy [25] and questions as to whether Calico had produced any useful scientific advancements. [26] 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. [26]

See also

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References

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