This is another point of reinforcement for my view that this effort is going to look much like a mix of the Ellison Medical Foundation plus Sirtris: vastly expensive and with little other than knowledge to show for it once investors give up, because the researchers are from the outset trying to do something that is very hard, and which even if achieved will produce only small benefits. (Which is to say carry on trying to make drug candidates like Rapamycin do something useful enough to become a clinical treatment, bashing the square pegs at hand into the circular holes of regulation and clinical benefit).

"The AbbVie partnership seemingly makes it clear that Calico will be a drug discovery and development company, which is what many observers expected based on Mr. Levinson’s background in drug development."

In the best scenario, five years of this will raise the water level enough for more meaningful approaches than calorie restriction mimetics, autophagy inducers, and other attempts at slow-aging drugs that have consumed billions to date with nothing to show for it, to raise significant funds themselves. In the worst scenario, it burns investors for a decade on the whole topic.

It is a real time of choice and opportunity at the present. The lumbering monolith of mainstream research can continue to pursue things like Human Longevity Inc and rapamycin derivatives that are probably going to be profitable yet achieve next to no useful gain of human life span (because again they are doing hard things that can only achieve small benefits at best) or, hopefully, some form of disruption for a better path will overtake enough of the community to make a difference.

It is clear that far from everyone in the research community thinks that old school drug discovery, farming the natural world to take potshots at restructuring metabolism so as to work slightly better when damaged by age (without in any way fixing the underlying damage!) is the smart way forward. There is SENS, there are the European researchers behind the Hallmarks of Aging manifesto, there are some of the Russian contingent with novel ideas. The near future doesn't have to be an enormous waste of time and money that will go nowhere but to generate voluminous databases, entirely bypassing any realistic opportunity for achieving actual rejuvenation and repair of the causes of aging. But I fear that it will, based on what we're seeing the big money do.