Google Backs Venture to Research Aging - Wall Street Journal

Google Inc. is backing a new company to research aging, taking an unusual business swing at the burgeoning science of extending the human lifespan. The venture, which is long on goals but short on specifics, is known as Calico, and will operate separately from Google, the online search giant said Wednesday. "We believe we can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people," Google CEO Larry Page said in a blog post. "This is clearly a longer-term bet." Calico will be headed by rival Apple Inc. Chairman Arthur Levinson, who has an extensive background in healthcare including serving as CEO from 1995 to 2009 of biotechnology pioneer Genentech Inc., where he remains chairman, and a director of parent Roche Holding AG. He was also a Google director, stepping aside in 2009 in the wake of a Federal Trade Commission investigation. Along with Google, Dr. Levinson is himself an investor in Calico. Neither Google nor Dr. Levinson disclosed the size of their stakes in Calico, which Dr. Levinson said in a web posting was an abbreviation of California Life Company. A Google spokeswoman and Apple spokesman both declined to comment. Apple CEO Tim Cook, however, expressed support for Dr. Levinson's work with his corporate rival. He said "there is no one better suited to lead this mission," in a statement released by Google. The new venture is the latest in a recent flurry of moonshot proposals from Silicon Valley executives. Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison founded the Ellison Medical Foundation, which has a focus on longevity. Tesla Motors Inc. CEO Elon Musk said he hopes to build a high-speed train linking Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes, while Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and tech investors formed a $3 million prize for health-science research. Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos has ambitions to build a 10,000-year clock and lower the cost of space travel. Google provided scant details about how Calico would operate or how it would tackle its ambitions of improving the health of "millions of lives." But Jay Olshansky, an aging expert at the University of Illinois of Chicago, said one potentially promising path is to research therapies that target the aging process itself. While medical research typically focuses on finding treatments and cures for individual ailments such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, "if you're going to have an impact on human health and longevity in the future, the way to go is to go after aging itself," Dr. Olshansky said. A founder of a consortium called the Longevity Dividend Initiative, Dr. Olshansky said he gave a talk at conference in 2010 in which he said that finding a cure for cancer would only extend the human lifespan by about three and one-half years. The reason is, he said, is it would "expose people who were saved from dying of cancer to all the other diseases and disorders" that are the result of aging. He said Mr. Brin attended the meeting and asked him questions about the talk. He hasn't discussed Calico with anyone at Google—the first he'd heard of the venture was Wednesday— though he described the formation of Calico as "great news." Healthcare may be particularly lucrative for investors. Venture capital firms have poured $1.81 billion into healthcare startups in this year's second quarter, a 24% jump from the first quarter alone, according to researcher CB Insights. There were 15 initial public offerings among venture capital backed healthcare firms in this year's first six months, CB Insights said. Experts said Dr. Levinson's involvement as CEO gives the venture a strong dose of credibility. "He is so dogged about great science," said Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who served as president of Genentech under Dr. Levinson and is now chancellor of the University of California San Francisco. "He has incredible rigor, a really high bar and is skeptical, but he's willing to take risks." via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNEmSPxm-_dLWSDzPIjWIkF0SWr3Tg&url=http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-331379/

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