Google is extending its reach into age-related diseases and longevity research with a recently announced relationship between the pharmaceutical company, AbbVie, and its life sciences company Calico (see: AbbVIe and Calico Announce a Novel Collaboration to Accelerate the Discovery, Development, and Commercialization of New Therapies). Here are more details from the article:
AbbVie and Calico announced a novel R&D collaboration intended to help the two companies discover, develop and bring to market new therapies for patients with age-related diseases, including for neurodegeneration and cancer. Calico is the Google-backed life sciences company....The agreement paves the way for Calico to establish a world-class research and development facility in the San Francisco Bay Area. Under the agreement, the companies will combine their complementary strengths to accelerate the availability of new therapies for age-related diseases: Calico will use its scientific expertise to establish a world-class research and development facility, with a focus on drug discovery and early drug development; and Abbie will provide scientific and clinical development support and its commercial expertise to bring new discoveries to market....AbbVie and Calico will each initially provide up to $250 million to fund the collaboration with the potential for both sides to contribute an additional $500 million. Calico will be responsible for research and early development during the first five years and continue to advance collaboration projects through Phase 2a for a ten-year period
Calico's (and Google's) mission in this collaborative effort was described in another article as "curing death" (see: Google's project to 'cure death,' Calico, announces $1.5 billion research center). Here's another interesting quote from this article:
Remember, Google introduced Calico to the world with the bold ambition of "curing death." CEO Larry Page, Google Ventures head honcho Bill Maris, and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who Google hired as its director of engineering, have all expressed a deep interest in radical life extension and the Singularity. Up until today we haven't had a lot of detail about how Calico would pursue that goal.
I blogged more than nine years ago about anti-aging physicians and their longevity treatments (see: Anti-Aging, Longevity Medicine, and Lab Testing) but have not thought much about the topic since then. The relevance of the anti-aging approach for the lab world is that these physicians often launch their workups with an extensive battery of lab tests to assess biologic age as opposed to chronologic age. From my perspective, probably the best and most scientifically valid way to prolong one's life is through weight reduction and even extreme calorie restriction (see: Calorie Restriction Extends Lifespan of Normal Cells and Inhibits Atypical Cells). The former helps avoid obesity-related diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
I did a quick Google search on the topic of anti-aging and much of the material retrieved still seems to be fall into what I would call the "alternative medicine" realm. It's thus interesting that Calico with its partnership with AbbVie seem intent on bringing more respectability to this area of medical research. Here's a quote from the Wikipedia article on life extension to provide a rough perspective on the size of this market (see: Life extension):
The sale of putative anti-aging products such as nutrition, physical fitness, skin care, hormone replacements, vitamins, supplements and herbs is a lucrative global industry, with the US market generating about $50 billion of revenue each year. Some medical experts state that the use of such products has not been proven to affect the aging process and many claims regarding the efficacy of these marketed products have been roundly criticized by medical experts, including the American Medical Association.
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