Calico (Calico Life Sciences)

What it is

Calico Life Sciences was launched in 2013 by Alphabet (then Google) with founding leadership from Art Levinson (former Genentech CEO) and a remit to apply long-time-horizon science to aging biology.

Focus

• Basic biology of aging across species.
• Drug-discovery partnerships (notably with AbbVie for translational work).
• The Naked Mole-Rat as a model of negligible senescence and cancer resistance.
• Other unconventional models for hyper-longevity.

Notable people

• Cynthia Kenyon (VP of Aging Research) — the daf-2 discoverer.
• David Botstein (former Chief Scientific Officer, retired).
• Hal Barron (was president).

What they’ve disclosed publicly

• Years of basic-research publications across many model systems.
• Several drug candidates moved into clinical-stage trials through the AbbVie partnership (mostly disease-specific, not pure geroscience endpoints).
• Less commercial-stage output than capitalisation might suggest — consistent with their stated long-horizon thesis.

How to read it

Calico is a useful indicator of where deep-pocketed long-horizon biotech believes aging biology can be drugged. The company is opaque by design; their published science is the visible part.

Related entries

Cynthia Kenyon, Insulin/IGF-1 signalling, Geroscience hypothesis.