An Interview with a Principal Investigator at Calico

Calico is Google's venture into aging research. It has, in general, been a disappointment to the community - though I suspect that this is a matter of unrealistic expectations as to the path that any new, large deployment of capital is likely to follow. Rather than taking on any of the approaches to rejuvenation that might plausibly produce sizable gains in life span, such as those of the SENS portfolio, Calico has focused on very staid, long-standing metabolic manipulations derived from the study of calorie restriction and growth hormone loss of function mutants. These lines of research are highly unlikely to produce sizable gains in health and longevity in humans, as the calorie restriction response and disruption of growth hormone metabolism are known to produce only modest gains in our species. Calico, like the Ellison Medical Foundation that preceded it, has in essence become a small arm of the National Institute on Aging, characterized by conducting fundamental rather than translational research, and in areas of the field that won't do much for human health and life span at the end of the day. What area of aging and age-related diseases has Calico's biggest focus at the moment? Our top-level goal is to develop interventions that delay aging, but to test such interventions, we have to be able to measure aging. This is easier said than done - the gold standard, lifespan, takes a long time and is relatively information-poor. There are molecular and cellular...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs