Google-backed Calico and AbbVie launch partnership to research age-related diseases. And more business news. Joanne Po reports. Photo: AbbVie
Google Inc. GOOGL +0.07% 's secretive Calico LLC life-sciences company unveiled a potential $1.5 billion research partnership with drug maker AbbVie Inc., ABBV -0.88%marking the entrance of a potentially big player in developing treatments for age-related diseases.
Google has said little about Calico, in which it is the primary investor, since forming the company last year with former Genentech Inc. Chief Executive Arthur Levinson. On Wednesday, a Google spokesman declined to say how many employees Calico has or whether it had begun any other research projects.
Under the new partnership, Calico and AbbVie will each invest up to $250 million, and potentially another $500 million each, to tackle conditions like cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. The companies said they would share costs and profits from the collaboration equally.
Calico, run by Mr. Levinson and former Genentech colleague Hal Barron, will build a research-and-development center in the San Francisco Bay Area. It will oversee early drug development and the early stages of human clinical trials for drugs. AbbVie will help Calico identify, design and conduct early-stage research, and has the option to manage late-stage drug development and marketing of any drugs that pass through the early stages of trials.
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Calico is one of several Google efforts to move beyond its Internet search roots into other industries being changed by technology. The AbbVie deal suggests Google is willing to put serious resources behind the project.
"It's a drop in the bucket for Google, but they are seeking big outcomes by dramatically extending human life," said Scott Strawn, an analyst at research firm IDC. "These types of partnerships will be core to making this happen."
The drug industry has had a mixed record in its efforts to significantly improve treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Several experimental treatments designed to halt or reverse the underlying progression of those diseases have failed in recent clinical trials, including bapineuzumab, an experimental Alzheimer's treatment co-developed by Johnson & Johnson JNJ -0.40% and Pfizer Inc.PFE -0.98%
Big pharmaceutical companies like AbbVie typically team with biotech startups later in the drug-development cycle around a specific treatment that has shown promise in clinical trials. With Calico, AbbVie is investing at least $250 million in a project that is just getting started and will focus on early-stage drug research for at least a decade.
"This is a big leap into the unknown for AbbVie. Google is used to leaping into the unknown but AbbVie is not," said Aubrey de Grey, chief scientific officer at SENS Research Foundation, a charity that develops therapies for reducing and reversing aging.
Calico, or California Life Company, is one of several companies using cheaper technology to analyze genetic information in the hopes of creating treatments for age-related diseases. The general goal is to identify genetic mutations that may contribute to long life, or that make some people more prone to diseases.
Calico and AbbVie will invest up to $250 million each and have agreed to contribute another $500 million each. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Human Longevity Inc., co-founded by genetics pioneer Craig Venter, is building a huge database of human genetic data to tackle age-related diseases including cancer, diabetes and obesity, heart and liver diseases, and dementia.
Chinese genomics giant BGI and biopharmaceutical company H3 Biomedicine Inc. launched a partnership last year to find gene mutations that could be potential targets for cancer drugs.
Google's own research lab, Google X, is working on a study called Baseline, which it hopes will build a genetic and molecular picture of a healthy human. Other medical researchers will then be able to use that information to create new treatments to prolong life.
Calico hasn't identified its specific areas of focus yet, but it has been hiring medical-research experts in the past year and recently launched a website. Google hasn't disclosed how much money it has invested in Calico.
In a post on Google+, Mr. Levinson called the AbbVie partnership a "pivotal event" that will "turbocharge" the company's efforts to prolong human life.
David Botstein, Cynthia Kenyon and Robert Cohen joined Calico in late 2013. Dr. Botstein has been a leading genetics researcher for more than 30 years, while Dr. Kenyon's research shows that aging is a regulated process controlled by genes, rather than something unpredictable. Dr. Cohen helped Genentech develop several of the company's groundbreaking cancer drugs.
AbbVie sells the prostate cancer drug Lupron and the company's oncology group is involved in more than 55 active clinical trials and is investigating more than 15 different cancers and tumors.
On Wednesday, AbbVie and Inifinity Pharmaceuticals Inc. launched a partnership to develop a cancer drug call duvelisib.
In neuroscience, AbbVie sells Duodopa for Parkinson's disease outside the U.S., and has been developing a potential new treatment for multiple sclerosis.
Write to Alistair Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com and Peter Loftus at peter.loftus@wsj.com