Google-Backed Calico Project Will Investigate Anti-Aging Technologies
This article was originally published in The Pink Sheet Daily
Executive Summary
The Internet search and advertising giant has tapped Genentech and Apple chairman Art Levinson to lead a new initiative that will explore aging and related diseases. Google will invest an undisclosed amount to launch the latest Silicon Valley-funded effort to extend human longevity.
Google Inc. and veteran technology and biotech executive Art Levinson are launching Calico, an independent company that plans to address aging and related diseases. The Silicon Valley powerhouse revealed the venture Sept. 18, and made an investment of undisclosed size in the project.
Levinson, who will serve as Calico’s CEO alongside his other posts, brings credibility to a project that seems enormously ambitious. The executive has been chairman of Genentech Inc. since 1999, and was its CEO from 1995 through its 2009 acquisition by Roche (Also see "Roche Wins Genentech After Months-Long Battle" - Pink Sheet, 26 Mar, 2009.). Levinson also serves as a Roche director, and ascended to the chairman’s seat on Apple Inc.’s board after the death of Steve Jobs in 2011.
Calico draws its name from the words “California Life Company,” according to a posting by Levinson on the Google+ social media service. “[W]hen [Google CEO Larry Page] and [Google Ventures partner] Bill Maris approached me about a venture that would take the long term view on aging and illness, I was deeply intrigued,” wrote Levinson. “For example, what underlies aging? Might there be a direct link between certain diseases and the aging process?”
Details surrounding Calico are still relatively scant. In his own Google+ post, Page described it as a “longer-term bet,” and suggested it could tackle age-related issues such as decreased mobility, loss of mental acuity, and life-threatening diseases that afflict the aged.
It’s also not clear whether Google’s venture arm, Google Ventures, invested in Calico, or whether the parent company will fund the project directly. Without mentioning the venture unit, Page wrote that “new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business.” Google proper has funded companies before, including 23andMe Inc., the personalized genetics company co-founded by Page’s wife Anne Wojcicki.
Google Ventures has gradually made more investments in the life sciences industry, although such deals represent only a small fraction of its total commitments (Also see "Google's Doc: A Physician Leads Google Ventures Into Health Care" - Scrip, 15 Mar, 2013.).Of the more than 150 investments backed by the firm, at least 11 are life sciences start-ups. Many of these draw on the parent company’s computing power, human resources, and data analysis expertise.
Others Pursuing “Life Extension” Too
Page and Levinson are not the first prominent Silicon Valley figures to explore life extension. Along with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan, Russian billionaire and technology investor Yuri Milner, and Wojcicki, the pair sponsored the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, which will provide five awards of $3 million each annually to scientists interested in “curing intractable diseases and and extending human life,” according to a statement. The group established the Prize and announced its first 11 grants in February 2013.
Others have shown an interest as well, including another prominent Google employee. Inventor and technologist Ray Kurzweil, hired in late 2012 as Google’s director of engineering, has long shown an interest in increasing human longevity. Kurzweil co-wrote the 2009 book Transcend: Nine Steps To Living Well Forever, concerning “radical life extension.”
Billionaire PayPal founder, early Facebook investor and Founders Fund partner Peter Thiel has voiced a desire to be a supercentenarian; his firm invested in now-defunct Halcyon Molecular, a start-up that hoped to use a novel genome-sequencing technique to prevent mortality (Also see "Laissez-Faire Founders Fund Sets Sights On Health Care" - Scrip, 27 Feb, 2012.). Thiel has also donated money to the Methuselah Foundation, an organization that provides cash grants to anti-aging scientists.
Although its venture arm has placed multiple bets on start-ups in various corners of the health care industry, Google’s best-known health product was a flop. In 2011, the company pulled the plug on consumer health profile tool Google Health, three years after its launch.