146 replies to this topic

[albedo]

And momentum is building as with CaLiCo and Watson we now have Venter's Human Longevity:
http://www.humanlongevity.com/

and just now In Silico Medicine Inc:
http://www.prweb.com...web11644588.htm

Yes Aubrey's job is getting easier ... :-)

Please get to us fast with something actionable! Do not let me loose this train!

[YOLF]

One thing we need to remember is that the war against aging isn't over yet. The allies have assembled, but our diligence is still needed and we've only fired a few shots. The more the better.

[albedo]

One thing we need to remember is that the war against aging isn't over yet. The allies have assembled, but our diligence is still needed and we've only fired a few shots. The more the better.

Absolutely! Far to be won! There will be an acceleration when money is coming and more importantly, actually very much related, when society in general will start to get interested and will realize this war is worth fighting (talk about side effects and reduced cost of healthcare rather than longevity!). At the same time the curmudgeons camp will also increase in number though. Also, can you imagine if you arrive to enroll also leaders from the Church? They should be on the "life" side! Aubrey did a point on this once.

Edited by albedo, 03 April 2014 - 03:17 PM.

[YOLF]

Remember, we are all doomed to die ... even Larry Page and Arthur Levinson ... it is a motivation.

We'll let you think that as soon as you sign up for cryonics

One thing we need to remember is that the war against aging isn't over yet. The allies have assembled, but our diligence is still needed and we've only fired a few shots. The more the better.

Absolutely! Far to be won! There will be an acceleration when money is coming and more importantly, actually very much related, when society in general will start to get interested and will realize this war is worth fighting (talk about side effects and reduced cost of healthcare rather than longevity!). At the same time the curmudgeons camp will also increase in number though. Also, can you imagine if you arrive to enroll also leaders from the Church? They should be on the "life" side! Aubrey did a point on this once.

http://www.youtube.c...prbkIb5IaEPUmVd

Edited by cryonicsculture, 03 April 2014 - 05:34 PM.

[APBT]

Geneticist Cynthia Kenyon is heading to Google
http://www.sfgate.co...5673.php#photo-6186198

Google's mysterious health venture dedicated to extending human life has quietly lured a prominent scientist away from UCSF, The Chronicle has learned.

The university confirmed that Cynthia Kenyon, a biochemistry and biophysics professor acclaimed for her discoveries about the genetics of aging, left UCSF this month to join Calico, Google's nascent biotechnology company. She had served as a part-time adviser to Calico since November.

Google has revealed little about Calico since the search giant formed the independent company in September, except that it wants to slow aging and fight age-related diseases. As Google CEO Larry Page once put it, Calico is truly a "moon shot."

Kenyon, a global pioneer in aging research since the 1990s, joins a roster of A-list scientists led by Chief Executive Officer Arthur Levinson, who also chairs the boards of Genentech and Apple.

Google "really wants to pull together initially a very small group of people who have worldwide reputations," said George Geis, an adjunct professor who specializes in technology mergers and acquisitions at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. "Cynthia clearly does."

Kenyon, who will remain affiliated with UCSF as an emeritus professor, said she is excited to join Calico but declined to offer specifics. "Calico is still sorting out directions and priorities and is not yet in a position to be talking about itself," she said in an e-mail.
 

Clues to ambitions
Secrecy aside, Kenyon's background offers some clues to Calico's ambitions.

She began studying aging in the 1980s, but had trouble finding anyone who shared her enthusiasm for the notoriously difficult field. The scientific community suddenly became a lot more interested in 1993, when Kenyon and her team discovered that partially disabling a single gene - called daf-2 - doubled the life span of roundworms.

The idea that humans could scientifically control aging was an unexpected breakthrough. The research paved the way for other experiments that demonstrated fruit flies and mice can also live longer because of the mutation. Humans who live to 100 are more likely to have mutations in the daf-2 gene, too.

Kenyon's work suggests that drugs targeting this pathway could treat maladies of aging such as Alzheimer's and some cancers.

"Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases," she explained to The Chronicle in 2005. "So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease."

In interviews and speeches, Kenyon comes across as approachable, energetic and, yes, far younger than her 60 years. So deep is her dedication that she avoids bread and sugar - except dark chocolate - because studies show they speed up aging.

"We are trying to find drugs that people could take to make them disease-resistant, more youthful and healthy," Kenyon told the Observer last year. "Eventually we will find them.

"Just living longer and being sick is the worst," she continued. "But the idea that you could have fewer diseases, and just have a healthy life and then turn out the lights, that's a good vision to have. And I think what we know about some of these pathways suggests that might be possible."
 

'Fountain of youth'
In 1999, Kenyon co-founded a Boston company working on treatments for metabolic diseases based on aging mechanisms - a "fountain of youth" drug. Appropriately named Elixir Pharmaceuticals, the company initially raised $36.5 million in venture capital.

A decade later, Elixir was close to signing a $500 million deal that would have allowed drug giant Novartis to either exclusively license worldwide rights to Elixir's diabetes program or acquire the company outright.

But that deal appears to have fallen through. The next year, the company licensed a potential therapy for Huntington's disease to Siena Biotech in Italy. Elixir, however, shut down sometime after 2010, documents show.

Still, Kenyon appears ready to give the industry another try.

"Cynthia's courage to follow her vision and plow ahead into un-chartered territory is the definition of being a leader in science," Kaveh Ashrafi, a UCSF associate professor of physiology who also studies roundworm biology, said in an e-mail.

Kenyon has been directing UCSF's Larry L. Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging and running a laboratory of graduate and postdoctoral students. A UCSF spokesman said those researchers will also move to Calico over the next year.

In November, Calico hired Dr. Hal Barron as president of research and development. He had previously led global product development at pharmaceutical giant Roche. The company's chief scientific officer is David Botstein, who was a noted geneticist at Princeton University. And Dr. Robert Cohen, who is overseeing research and development and business development, comes from Genentech, where he helped bring several cancer drugs to market.

Among them, Kenyon demonstrates the strongest expertise in aging.

"To me," she once wrote, "it seems possible that a fountain of youth, made of molecules and not simply dreams, will someday be a reality."

This article has been corrected since it appeared in print editions.
 

Cynthia Kenyon
Age: 60

Breakthrough research: Discovered key genes involved in the regulation of aging in roundworms, a pathway that has since also been found in other organisms, including mammals.

Work: Joined UCSF in 1986. Latest role was American Cancer Society Professor in the biochemistry and biophysics department, and director of the Larry L. Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging.

Education: Valedictorian in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Georgia (1976), doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1981)

Affiliations: Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. Past president of the Genetics Society of America.

Source: UCSF

[albedo]

APBT, wonderful!

 

[YOLF]

Cool!

[erzebet]

Ever since Calico was announced I wasn't able to change my impression that this company was started by naive people with no experience in the medical field. Having a lot of cash is useless when you don't know what to invest in. What is the company's strategy?

 

With SENS it's very clear - every intervention strategy is well thought, from the type of aging damage it seeks to repair to similar diseases in which the intervention can be tested.

[YOLF]

Ever since Calico was announced I wasn't able to change my impression that this company was started by naive people with no experience in the medical field. Having a lot of cash is useless when you don't know what to invest in. What is the company's strategy?

 

With SENS it's very clear - every intervention strategy is well thought, from the type of aging damage it seeks to repair to similar diseases in which the intervention can be tested.

You bring up a good point. I too would like to know more about what google is doing and how it will extend our lives. We need to know how the people running the companies actually feel about life extension. Have they written any books that might give us some insight? What evidence is there that these people are passionate about RLE and not doing something other than what they state they are doing. It could be a clever cover for different activities that involve hiring a ton of high profile people and have nothing to do with RLE or maybe be more about healthspans or something like that.

[niner]

Ever since Calico was announced I wasn't able to change my impression that this company was started by naive people with no experience in the medical field. Having a lot of cash is useless when you don't know what to invest in. What is the company's strategy?

 

With SENS it's very clear - every intervention strategy is well thought, from the type of aging damage it seeks to repair to similar diseases in which the intervention can be tested.

 

Pretty much my feeling as well.  Maybe the biggest plus of Calico is the legitimization it confers to other anti-aging efforts. 

[albedo]

We need to see how this initialize will evolve. For the time being we know nothing about it. But I trust some of the top people being hired. I fully support the interconnect with SENS: it would be no surprise to me this will naturally happen, to some extent at least, actually to the extent of SENS will retain its freedom of investigation. Science has been historically not only progressing out of curiosity and wish to deepen our knowledge of the universe and human condition but, like it or not, very much driven by the strong will of the most powerful people on earth. Very often you had a "Prince" or "King" with no fundamental interest for science or human condition behind the most impactfull scientific progresses  There is no fundamental need by the initiators of the project of knowing the medical field but I would put more importance on the people they will be able to gather around the initiative and, importantly, to the management and transparency on the progress they will surely make potentially driving, later, a real change in all healthcare.

[Link]

The big high of last year was the anouncement of Calico, but even then i was thinking that, if they were serious about this stuff, why don't they just back SENS? They could double the SENS budget without batting an eye.

 

I've read the hype of the people that they have hired, but they all seem to be part of the "old school" of researchers who just do ineffectual research tweaking genes and drugs trying to slow aging and mildly extend the lifespans of lab rats and then going nowhere with it.

 

It almost feels to some extent like it was designed more to generate hype and increase Google's perception in the public's eye as a super-futuristic tech company. I can still remember the headline's generated by the original announcement being stuff like "Google to solve death"

 

Of course i desperately hope to be proved wrong, hopefully we hear something from them sooner rather than later but, if their first announcement is them spending millions on another calorie restriction study, i think i might cry.

 

 

 

[YOLF]

The big high of last year was the anouncement of Calico, but even then i was thinking that, if they were serious about this stuff, why don't they just back SENS? They could double the SENS budget without batting an eye.

 

I've read the hype of the people that they have hired, but they all seem to be part of the "old school" of researchers who just do ineffectual research tweaking genes and drugs trying to slow aging and mildly extend the lifespans of lab rats and then going nowhere with it.

 

It almost feels to some extent like it was designed more to generate hype and increase Google's perception in the public's eye as a super-futuristic tech company. I can still remember the headline's generated by the original announcement being stuff like "Google to solve death"

 

Of course i desperately hope to be proved wrong, hopefully we hear something from them sooner rather than later but, if their first announcement is them spending millions on another calorie restriction study, i think i might cry.

SENS probably won't make them any money. They are a charity and get their money from endowments, donations, and fundraisers from organizations like LongeCity.

 

Another impact we should be aware of is that the industry is now going to have more jobs which means LongeCity will need to pick up the fundraising pace and begin the transition to full time employees IMO. I'll be working on that in the not too distant future.

[John Schloendorn]

What evidence is there that these people are passionate about RLE and not doing something other than what they state they are doing

 

 

See the problem is that we don't know just which activity is going to result in life extension.  Anyone claiming to work on life extension does not and cannot know whether they really are.  Once upon a time, when humans wondered whether powered flight was possible, people who spoke passionately about flapping and feathers could easily get funding.  Whereas those who preferred to work with heavy metal machines were seen as working on something entirely unrelated, and failed to capture anyone's imagination.  

 

 

if their first announcement is them spending millions on another calorie restriction study, i think i might cry

 

 

Google, like most investors, invests exactly in the same way they made their money.  In this case that's by using Page Rank.  Page Rank is the math that ranks the websites in the search results.  You're an important website, if other important websites link to you.  Similarly, you're an important aging professor, when other important aging professors say you're important.  See the pattern?

 

Page Rank turns out to be a very efficient strategy to find knowledge that some humans somewhere currently possess.  Once you can prove something, most important people will by and large actually back you and refer more people your way.  But when you're searching for knowledge that nobody has discovered yet, then it will instead return the folks with who are best at winning the endorsement of their peers in the absence of provable ideas.  Whether these are also the best people for really discovering the knowledge, remains open to debate. 

 

It's a good trick.  But is it good enough?  What's the alternative? 

[follies]

>>What's the alternative

Application of AI and a molecular simulation of the human body is a complete solution. Google has demonstrated AI with driverless cars, language translation etc. Molecular simulation requires managing really big data which google understands but also requires domain expertise which they are acquiring.

[niner]

What evidence is there that these people are passionate about RLE and not doing something other than what they state they are doing

 
See the problem is that we don't know just which activity is going to result in life extension.  Anyone claiming to work on life extension does not and cannot know whether they really are.  Once upon a time, when humans wondered whether powered flight was possible, people who spoke passionately about flapping and feathers could easily get funding.  Whereas those who preferred to work with heavy metal machines were seen as working on something entirely unrelated, and failed to capture anyone's imagination.
 [...]
What's the alternative?

This seems overly pessimistic. I think we know more than nothing. I think we've given worm genes a shot, and CR has been studied to death. I'm concerned that Calico's management might be set in old-school ways that have already failed to be useful. I really hope that I'm wrong about that, and that they were chosen mostly for proven ability to lead a biomedical research organization and not to promote their own work. We have to hope that given adequate funding, they will bring in people with new ideas and expertise. The alternative? I suppose there isn't one, other than to say that I'd feel better if I saw some evidence that they were thinking about rejuvenation as at least a part of their overall plan. I'm not saying they should be "all in" on rejuvenation, as though we know that is the one and only "true answer". I just hope that they're not all in on just slowing aging.

Edited by niner, 28 July 2014 - 04:25 PM.

[John Schloendorn]

Haha.  Yeah.  We do know a thing or two about how not to extend life.  I exactly agree with your concern.  That's the big problem in Google's way of thinking.  When you do a Google web search, it's near impossible to get it to filter very popular, but irrelevant results out.  They will absolutely face this problem in trying to cure death, and I can't see what they could possibly do about it, within the limits of what Page Rank like thinking can do.

[tunt01]

I wouldn't assume that Google evaluates biomedical research in sort of posterior Markov Chain analysis (a la Page Rank).  I think it sort of short changes their decision making process in an institution that is otherwise has shown a rather intelligent decision making process (acquisitions, new investments in greenfield areas with zero previous revenue/data/proven results).

 

I think Brin's work on parkinson's and tangential relatoinship to 23andme probably informs part of their understanding and investment process.  Whether or not the well is poisoned by hired scientists who promote their own work over that of others remains to be seen, but is probably a legitimate concern.

[John Schloendorn]

Well don't assume.  Try talking to them  Is it a coincidence that they developed economically successful products whenever they tried something that somebody already knew how to do (server farms, youtube, random tech investments...), but not whenever they tried something nobody knew how to do yet (self-driving cars, 23&me, random bio investments...)?  Sure it's certainly in large part because innovation is hard, and it's absolutely to their credit big time that they even tried.  One can't quantitatively resolve this from the systematic problems with their cultural way of thinking that I alluded to...  This is for inspiration, that's all.   So how about we reconvene and discuss the success of Google curing death just before we die, see how that went

 

[forever freedom]

I see no news about Calico, ever since the company was created. If they were just a PR stunt for Google, as some here have said, they would have probably released some media-grabbing news now and then? But i search for something and i find nothing. Complete silence ever since it was created. 

 

Either they're really serious and have no time for media pleasing, or... I hope the company wasn't abandoned..

 

Their website: http://www.calicolabs.com

 

To find their website, it doesn't suffice to google search "Calico", not even Calico Labs, which is their official name. So their website doesn't even appear in Google search's first page. I had to find their Wikipedia page and then find the website. 

 

Once entering the website, in the Press area, their message is that they are not taking press inquiries. In their Jobs area, they are not taking any job applications.

 

Even though they may be still in the strategic planning stage, I fear that there's a higher probability that the company has just been abandoned for whatever reason.

[follies]

They are not abandoned. They are low key.

[forever freedom]

That's one possibility, yes, and I hope you're right. What makes you so sure of your opinion?

Edited by forever freedom, 08 August 2014 - 02:05 PM.

[forever freedom]

This article from FightAging website, written yesterday, reinforces what i posted a few days ago:
https://www.fightagi...te-launched.php

The article:

Google's California Life Company has launched a stub website. The sparse information presented there is supportive of the view that Calico will be taking theLongevity Dividend path of focusing on genetics, metabolic manipulation, and standard issue drug discovery. This will look a lot like a continuation of sirtuin research, which is to say that they will spend a lot of money, generate a lot of data, and utterly fail to produce ways to meaningfully extend healthy human life. That is a fairly safe prediction for the outcome of any well-funded project that is not trying to build repair-based technologies to revert the causes of aging, but rather intends to alter the operation of metabolism to gently slow aging. Metabolism is immensely complex and poorly understood, and there is no well-defined course towards results that is analogous to the SENS plans for repair-based approach. A billion dollars and fifteen years has been spent on simply trying to reproduce a fraction of the most understood form of natural metabolic alteration that enhances longevity, the response to calorie restriction, with no good results. For that time and money we could have a demonstration of rejuvenation in mice via SENS therapies already.

Genetics is hot and drug discovery is safe and understood by investors. So as interest in treating aging is rising, we see funds raised and ventures started for groups trying to perform drug development based on genetic studies of aging and longevity. This is not because it has a hope of meaningful results, but because it is where funds can be raised, and where money can be made in the traditional Big Pharma fashion even without achieving any great extension of human longevity. In the Longevity Dividend viewpoint an ambitious goal is to add seven years of life expectancy over the next two decades through new drugs that alter metabolism - which is a miserable failure and a grand missed opportunity when compared to the indefinite extension of healthy life that might be attained by realizing comprehensive repair therapies for the damage that causes aging.

This is all disappointing, but that has been the signal all along as to where things were going with Calico: it is a project that may turn out to look a lot like a more highly publicized version of the Ellison Medical Foundation, in that it is simply adding more of the work already taking place at the NIA and elsewhere that is destined from the start to fail to advance human longevity. Its existence helps those elsewhere who are trying to raise funds to tackle aging, as it shifts conservative funding institutions in a direction of supporting such work, but that is about it.

To my eyes all of this reinforces the need to demonstrate beyond a doubt that repair approaches to reverse aging do in fact work, and work very much better and for far less cost of development than metabolic alteration. The way in which repair-based approaches will take over the mainstream of research is by showing that they produce compelling results at a time in which the other approaches are failing to do anything other than generate data and consume resources. The nearest approach to that point for the purposes of convincing people who support slowing aging but are not on board with aiming for rejuvenation is probably the targeted destruction of senescent cells, but even there it has been hard to raise funding for continued work and the reliance is on philanthropy to run the present study in normal rather than accelerated aging mice.

Quote:

We're tackling aging, one of life's greatest mysteries.

Calico is a research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan. We will use that knowledge to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. Executing on this mission will require an unprecedented level of interdisciplinary effort and a long-term focus for which funding is already in place.

We are scientists from the fields of medicine, drug development, molecular biology, and genetics. Through our research we're aiming to devise interventions that slow aging and counteract age‑related diseases. Understanding the fundamental science underlying aging and finding cures for the intractable diseases associated with aging require time, deep technical expertise, research and partnerships. We're just getting started and will post career opportunities here when they become available.

[YOLF]

Looks like we'll need to stay focused as a community and keep working in case this writer is correct that Google doesn't make it happen. Of course if as a community we stumble onto something promising, I'm sure companies like CaLiCo will want to pick up on it. 

 

In other words;

 

We need to be a backup plan or find multiple backup plans. We still don't know what will pan out.

[albedo]

The article from FightAging website let me now wonder if Calico will be truly game changing. We know almost nothing about it but the article makes some hints toward the opposite approach to SENS. If there will be no link to SENS at all it will be a huge lost opportunity. Complementarity of approaches can be key to progress a project and there is place for Calico as well well for SENS but the level of funding between the two efforts will be immensely different. Calico working with SENS or should I say rather SENS working with Calico, would make lot of sense and I hope there are contacts being taken. I hope Calico will not be just another initiative in life sciences as many IT corporation (e.g. see IBM I was already mentioning in my previous post and actually before their alliance with Apple which might add to the point) do have. Google themselves have their own list with Google Health (dropped) and more recently with Baseline Study and Google Fit as competitor to Apple's HealthKit.

[YOLF]

CaLiCo has a website and logo now. 

 

http://www.calicolabs.com/

[Kalliste]

Pity that Calico followed that road.

[A941]

What road?

[Kalliste]

The slow road to rejuvenation. Metabolic tricks and such. It will give at most a decade or two and be hideously expensive.

[YOLF]

Will it be worth the extra aging to live longer without sustainability in sight?

 

Life Extension? Not so much :(

 

This article says only 20-100 years. At that point, I'm not sure if it'll mean being young again, or just getting older. Life Extension has to be a sustainable goal or it's not real life extension, it's aging extension. Better voice your support for the Operations Fundraisers so we can shift to a full time work force and turn the tide. CaLiCo will only be helping us reach aging escape velocity if WE take action to push further.