Calico (company)
American biotechnology company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
 | |
| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | |
| Founded | September 18, 2013 |
| Founder | Bill Maris |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Arthur D. Levinson (CEO) |
Number of employees | 375 (2025[1]) |
| Parent | Google (2013–2015) Alphabet Inc. (2015–present) |
| Website | calicolabs |
History
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.[2][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]
The Calico team has included a number of pioneering researchers in the field of aging research, including members of the National Academy of Sciences, Cynthia Kenyon and Daniel E. Gottschling.[9] Some of the company’s earliest employees included the geneticist David Botstein, and cancer drug developer Robert L. Cohen,[10] Eric Verdin, CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, served as a consultant to the Calico team.[11]
At the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, Calico lost two top scientists; in December 2017 Hal Barron, 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] The partnership was extended in 2021.[16]AbbVie terminated the collaboration in November 2025, a few months after the companies announced the failure of fosigotifator in a Phase II/III trial for ALS.[17][18] By that time Abbvie had invested around $1.75 billion dollars, and two compounds arising from the collaboration were still in development by Calico: ABBV-CLS-484, a PTPN2/N1 phosphatase inhibitor and a potential cancer drug, and ABBV-CLS-628, a monoclonal antibody against pappalysin-1 that was in Phase II testing for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease.[19][20]
In 2015, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced a partnership with Calico to "advance research on age-related diseases and therapeutics",[21] a further partnership also was announced with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.[22] Also in 2015, Calico announced a partnership with QB3 based on researching the biology of aging and identifying potential therapeutics for age-related diseases[23] and one with AncestryDNA based on conducting research into the genetics of human lifespan.[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's 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]