Google is turning its might toward solving a mystery that has confounded mankind for millennia – and it’s enlisting the chairman of Apple to help unlock the genetic puzzle.
The search engine giant announced Sept. 18 that it is launching a new healthcare company that will focus on prolonging life and curing the diseases of old age. From “the decreased mobility and mental agility that comes with age, to life-threatening diseases that exact a terrible physical and emotional toll on individuals and families,” Google co-founder and chief executive officer Larry Page wrote on his company’s social network, Google+.
Calico will be led by renowned biochemist Art Levinson, who also is chairman and former CEO of the biotechnology company Genentech. Levinson will continue to lead the boards at Apple and Genentech while serving as Calico’s chief executive.
Levinson, who previously served on Google’s board, said he was intrigued when Page approached him about joining the anti-aging venture.
“For example, what underlies aging?” Levinson wrote in a Google+ post. “Might there be a direct link between certain diseases and the aging process?”
“Calico is an abbreviation for the ‘California Life Company,’ but if you’re thinking about cats, we like the old saying that they have nine lives,” he wrote.
Levinson told The New York Times that Calico initially will concentrate on research rather than drug development, including potentially funding university-based scientists.
“I’m sure they don’t mean that they will defeat death,” Harvard Medical School professor David Sinclair told the Times. “But if they were to give people five or 10 years of healthy life, that would change the world.”
Google did not release additional details about Calico, such as the amount of its own investment. The search engine company, which has about 45,000 full-time employees worldwide, reported total revenues of more than $14 billion for the second quarter of 2013, a 19% increase over the same three-month period in 2012.
The company is no shrinking violet when it comes to setting itself challenges – think driverless cars and Google Glass. Page calls such projects “moon shots.”
In his Google+ post, Page acknowledged that Calico represents a significant change of direction for his company but noted that technology holds “tremendous potential” to better lives in numerous ways.
“So don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses,” he wrote.
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