Unexpected uncoupling raises questions about the pace \u2013 and patience \u2013 of longevity drug discovery amid shifting pharma priorities. <\/p>\n
According to StatNews<\/a>, AbbVie has ended its 11-year collaboration with Calico Labs<\/a>, the Alphabet<\/a>-backed biotech created to tackle aging and age-related disease. The move brings to a close one of the most high-profile alliances between big pharma and big tech; around 100 scientists and chemists are expected to be affected by layoffs following the dissolution of the joint research programs.<\/p>\n The partnership, formed in 2014, combined AbbVie\u2019s drug development infrastructure with Calico\u2019s deep-biology approach to aging and neurodegeneration. Despite multiple renewals and substantial investment \u2013 reportedly over a billion dollars in total \u2013 the collaboration delivered limited clinical success. Calico\u2019s amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) candidate, fosigotifator, failed to meet its endpoints<\/a>, and AbbVie is reportedly moving away<\/a> from small-molecule discovery \u2013 the core of its work with Calico \u2013 toward biologics and advanced modalities that align more closely with its current portfolio.<\/p>\n Longevity.Technology: The end of AbbVie\u2019s partnership with Calico is less a post-mortem than a milestone \u2013 a reminder that the biology of aging may be universal, but its translation into profitable pipelines is anything but. For all Calico\u2019s resources and brainpower, the stubborn truth remains that geroscience moves at the pace of biology itself; mitochondria and senescent cells are not easily persuaded by capital injections. Yet there\u2019s something instructive in this reset. The longevity sector is maturing \u2013 investors are asking sharper questions, companies are narrowing focus and hype is yielding to hard data. If the past decade was about proving aging could be targeted, the next may be about proving it can be commercialised. Failure, inconvenient though it is, often teaches faster than funding.<\/p>\n Perhaps AbbVie\u2019s decision also signals a pragmatic retreat from the long game of fundamental aging science toward nearer-term returns; drug development timelines are long enough without adding the uncertainties of a still-nascent field. Calico\u2019s lofty beginnings \u2013 fuelled by Alphabet\u2019s conviction that aging could be decoded with enough data and determination \u2013 always carried a touch of Silicon Valley hubris, the assumption that biology would yield to computational willpower (although companies such as Insilico are beginning to demonstrate that AI-driven discovery can, with persistence, deliver tangible results). A decade on, AbbVie may simply have lost patience with promise unfulfilled. Still, this parting of the ways need not be read as an obituary for longevity biotech, but rather as a recalibration: the industry learning that extending healthspan demands not only scientific ingenuity, but strategic endurance \u2013 and perhaps a little less faith in moonshots.<\/p>\n Calico\u2019s statement and future plans <\/p>\n A Calico spokesman told Fierce Biotech<\/a>: \u201cWe\u2019re deeply appreciative of our partnership with AbbVie, which has played an important role in shaping Calico\u2019s clinical development capabilities. As we look ahead, we\u2019ll continue advancing the development of many of these programs while expanding our internal development infrastructure to advance more programs independently, while also forming new collaborative partnerships to bring expertise and technologies to enhance our current capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Calico, which emerged from Google\u2019s \u201cmoonshot factory\u201d in 2013 under the direction of Arthur Levinson and with backing from Larry Page, was conceived as a long-horizon enterprise: to understand the biology of aging and translate that knowledge into new therapeutics. Recent licensing of an IL-11 antibody program from China<\/a> hints that the company is refining, not abandoning, its ambitions.<\/p>\n Industry reflections <\/p>\n Writing on LinkedIn<\/a>, Insilico Medicine\u2019s Alex Zhavoronkov described the news as \u201csad for the longevity industry\u201d, noting that while Calico received extraordinary attention and investment, its output has lagged expectations. He suggested that Alphabet might have done better to merge Calico\u2019s capabilities with Isomorphic Labs<\/a>, applying AI-driven discovery directly to aging-related targets \u2013 a proposal that captures both the frustration and optimism rippling through the field.<\/p>\n After the honeymoon <\/p>\n AbbVie\u2019s withdrawal may mark the end of one of longevity\u2019s most visible alliances, but it also signals a new phase in which the field must balance vision with viability. As the industry shifts from grand declarations to grounded execution, the lessons of Calico and AbbVie will likely inform a more pragmatic generation of partnerships \u2013 ones that match scientific ambition with patient capital and clear translational routes. Aging, after all, remains undefeated; progress in the field will depend on endurance as much as inspiration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unexpected uncoupling raises questions about the pace \u2013 and patience \u2013 of longevity drug discovery amid shifting pharma…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[73269,3986,64,63,70339,6435,6436,113,137,500],"class_list":{"0":"post-294021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-abbvie","9":"tag-alphabet","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-calico","13":"tag-drug-development","14":"tag-drug-discovery","15":"tag-google","16":"tag-health","17":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}