In 2013, Time magazine ran a cover story titled Google vs. Death about Calico, a then-new Google-run health venture focused on understanding aging and how to beat it. We should shoot for the things that are really, really important, so 10 or 20 years from now we have those things done, Google CEO Larry Page told Time.

But how exactly would Calico help humans live longer, healthier lives? How would it invest its vast $1.5 billion pool of money? Beyond sharing the companys ambitious mission to better understand the biology of aging and treat aging as a disease Page was vague.

I recently started poking around in Silicon Valley and talking to researchers who study aging and mortality, and discovered that four years after its launch, we still dont know what Calico is doing.

I asked everyone I could about Calico and quickly learned that its an impenetrable fortress. Among the little more than a dozen press releases Calico has put out, there were only broad descriptions of collaborations with outside labs and pharmaceutical companies most of them focused on that overwhelmingly vague mission of researching aging and associated diseases. The media contacts there didnt so much as respond to multiple requests for interviews.

People who work at Calico, Calicos outside collaborators, and even folks who were no longer with the company, stonewalled me.

We should pause for a moment to note how strange this is. One of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world has taken an interest in aging research, with about as much funding as NIHs entire budget for aging research, yet its remarkably opaque.

Google also prides itself for being a leader on transparency and for its open culture. And were living in a time when the norms in science, particularly biomedical science, are centered around openness and data sharing. But these values have somehow eluded Calico.

For now, I think its safe to say Google has not solved aging. Or if it did, they havent told anybody.

Its not unusual for new startups to be stealthy for a period while they get going, but theres usually some public statement with specific details about the technology or science being developed, strategies and targets. That Calico wont say what its doing bothers leading aging researchers. They expressed confusion or frustration about Calicos stealthiness, and said the secrecy is not productive for science.

Eric Topol is a cardiologist who studies aging and the director of Scripps Translational Science Institute. Topol knows some of the scientists at Calico from their pre-Calico days. Theyre hyper secretive, he said. Since they moved to Google, he cant seem to reach them. I have invited them to speak at our program we have on genomic medicine. They say no, they cant talk about what theyre doing. I am not sure why thats the case.

There were no clinical trials or patents filed publicly under the Calico brand that I could find, and out of the 22 papers published by the company and its affiliates, only about half related to aging and many were review articles (not original research).

Nir Barzilai, a geneticist and one of the leading researchers in aging based at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said the publications didnt give him any special insights into what Calico is up to. Our field is interested in delaying aging and by that, delaying disease. [It seems] they are not doing that, he said. Its weird they dont come to us, look at our patents We have resources, we are eager to do partnerships and form bio-techs. And nobody from Calico talks to us.

Other top researchers on aging told me much the same. I dont interact with them, Felipe Sierra, director of the division of aging biology at NIHs National Institute on Aging, said. They dont want to interact with me. I ignore them as much as they ignore me. He also invited Calico scientists to present at NIH. They come to the meeting but they dont talk about what they are doing [They] wouldnt even talk about general directions [of their research].

There are a few potential explanations for Calicos secrecy. Among them: that Calico is just waiting for a big reveal. A December article in the MIT Technology Review, which was also scant on details about Calicos anti-aging science, hinted that might be the case:

[David] Botstein [the Calico Chief Scientific Officer] says a best case scenario is that Calico will have something profound to offer the world in 10 years. That time line explains why the company declines media interviews. There will be nothing to say for a very long time, except for some incremental scientific things. That is the problem.

But avoiding media hype does not require secrecy among scientific colleagues. If Calicos scientists were truly interested in pushing the boundaries of science, they might think about using some of the best practices that have been developed to that end: transparency, data sharing, and coordinating with other researchers so they dont go down redundant and wasteful paths.

As Topol said, Secretive research is pass. The world has moved on to fully demonstrate the value of openness, transparency, and avoidance of insular thinking.

There are other possible explanations for the stealthiness. A recent news release from Calico announced a partnership with C4 Therapeutics to work on coming up with drugs for "diseases of aging," such as cancer one of a number of drug company partnerships Calico has formed. If Calicos now focused on drug development, then a degree of secrecy might make sense. (Drug companies typically develop their products quietly to stay ahead of the competition.)

But researchers dont buy that explanation, either. The researchers [Calico] hired are using models such as yeasts, nematodes, and naked mole rats, said Barzilai. These are not the models that are relevant for drug development. Developing cures also doesnt fall in line with the companys original mission to treat aging as a genetic disease instead of hunting for treatments for age-related diseases.

Another potential reason for the lack of transparency the one I find most compelling is that its the company culture. Art Levinson, the CEO of Calico, is also chair of the board of Apple Inc. and was close to Steve Jobs, who was renowned for his clandestine approach to research and development and running a business. Its possible that Levinson has made secrecy part of Calicos DNA, the way its part of Apples DNA.

Perhaps Calico will one day justify its secrecy, Topol said. But at this point, he added, I dont understand it. Potentially withholding information about advances in biomedical science or cures for diseases is unacceptable: Lives are ultimately at stake. Anything that slows down progress in biomedical research cant be condoned.

For that reason, Id like to humbly invite Calico or people who have worked with the company to share what they are up to. I promise we wont hype it.

Have information about Calico? You can send me tips over email at julia.belluz@vox.com or secure PGP. (My key: 0AC1 64FA E095 851B 112A 0670 6D24 B5A4 56ED 285E)

Update Friday April 28, 2:34 p.m.: Thanks to reader tips and additional searches in PubMed, weve located and linked to several Calico papers we werent aware of when we first published this story on Thursday. I flagged the papers with the researchers quoted in this story who said they did not change their assessment of Calico.

See the article here:
Google is super secretive about its anti-aging research. No one knows why. - Vox