Four years after it started, there are still many questions revolving around Google’s startup health venture, Calico. It has guaranteed many great things like beating age growth but until now, there is no word about its latest development. The innovative approach of Google to venture on health gave people high hopes. At present time, the ambitious mission has stonewalled every information from their side.
“With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives”
Calico is concentrated on comprehending aging and how to defeat it. California Life Company or most commonly known as Calico is a bold idea, which aims to increase the lifespan of humans. The startup venture promised to tackle everything from Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s to cancer.
According to Larry Page, the CEO of Google, “Illness and aging affect all our families. With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives.”
But the vague information was said to have been released. There were broad reports of collaborations with other pharmaceutical companies and outside labs but a lot of them has discussed on the massively unclear mission of researching aging and associated sickness.
Fortune has mentioned that C4 Therapeutic boldly announced a five-year research partnership with Calico in order to develop drugs for the disease of aging, including cancer. The Verge also stated that AbbVie, a Chicago-based pharmaceutical giant, has partnered with Calico to expand and bring to market new drugs that will target on sickness associated with old age.
On the other hand, Hal Barron, R&D Chief Over at Calico, said that “We know from decades of translational research that it can be incredibly challenging to find effective pharmacologic inhibitors of many of the biologically well-validated targets, particularly in cancer.”
Google has an image of being a bold leader when it comes to transparency and for its open culture but those values have somehow dodged Calico. Google was reported to have spent $1.5 billion but does not discuss what they spent it on. No answer has been provided to all the requests for interviews, which clearly sums up the fact that Google has not yet solved aging.
Because there is no concrete information, many people have speculated that Calico is going to pursue a big data approach. It was said to be gathering big amounts of information from patients and will ‘crunch it up’ in order to help speed the way to health care discoveries. MIT Technology Review supported the theory that Calico is just waiting for a big reveal.
Calico has assured people of great possibilities when it comes to the world of medicine. No one knows what Google is up to now, but many are hoping that it will result in a bold solution, benefiting the society. The startup health venture is an innovative way of delving into what the future can offer. If the mission will be successful, the high degree of accuracy that Calico might offer is going to extend people’s age and maybe save their lives.
