Calico Life Sciences LLC is an American 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.
Calico, short for the California Life Company,[2][3] was announced on September 18, 2013, prior to Google's restructuring and was founded by former GV CEO Bill Maris.[4][5] In Google's 2013 Founders Letter, Larry Page described Calico as a company focused on "health, well-being, and longevity."[6] It was incorporated into Alphabet with Google's other sister divisions in 2015.[7][8]
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.[12][13][14]
Partnerships
In September 2014, Calico and AbbVie announced an R&D collaboration focused on aging and age-related diseases such as neurodegeneration and cancer.[15] Working together with AbbVie, Calico pursues discovery-stage research and development.[16] AbbVie provides scientific and clinical development support and lends its expertise to commercialization activities.[16] To date, the companies have committed to invest more than $1 billion into the collaboration.[17][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",[18] a further partnership also was announced with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.[19] Also in 2015, Calico announced a partnership with QB3 based on researching the biology of aging and identifying potential therapeutics for age-related diseases[20] and one with AncestryDNA based on conducting research into the genetics of human lifespan.[21]
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 only in mice.[22][23][24]
Reception
When Calico was formed, Google did not disclose many details, such as whether the company would focus on biology or information technology.[25] 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.[3][26] This led to frustration by researchers regarding Calico's secrecy[26] and questions as to whether Calico had produced any useful scientific advancements.[27] 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.[27]
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