The Stealth Attempt to Defeat Aging at Google’s Calico

By Published on December 28, 2015

Talk about a headline that sings. “Google vs. Death.” The Time magazine cover story from September 2013 heralded the creation of California Life Company, or Calico, a new firm incubated by Google with the audacious aim to extend human lifespans.

Although Calico formed two years before Alphabet, it had many of the markers Google’s co-founders outlined as their rationale for the holding company. A startup staring down a moonshot issue? Check. A problem with a very long time horizon? Check. Google’s tech savvy applied to a market well outside its domain? Check. A venerated founder at its helm? Calico chief Arthur Levinson — former CEO and board chair of biotech firm Genentech, board chair of Apple — may be the biggest heavy-hitter among Alphabet’s execs.

Levinson did not speak to Time for its story. And he has said basically zilch publicly about his company since. Yet some of the hyperbole accompanying Calico (Google wants to disrupt death!) is just that. It is evident that Levinson’s secretive company is focused on medical solutions that fend off the illnesses that come with old age; it’s not trying to give us immortality.

Calico has announced six partnerships for research and drug development, linking arms with two universities, a nonprofit, a pharmaceutical company (AbbVie) and the genealogical data firm Ancestry. Like Verily, Alphabet’s other health unit, Calico seems to be operating as a high-tech research and development lab, creating medical products that its pharma partners will take to market.

 

Read the article “The Stealth Attempt to Defeat Aging at Google’s Calico” on recode.net.

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