It’s been almost exactly a year since Google’s co-founder and CEO Larry Page (Photo ©Marcin Mycielski) announced the launch of Calico (California Life Company), a company that aims to fight aging and disease to associated with it. Calico has now announced a new partnership with pharmaceutical corporation AbbVie for the creation of a research center focused on age-related diseases, including neurodegenerative ones and cancer.

Calico’s research center will be opened in San Francisco, California, with a considerable investment. Both Calico and AbbVie will initially contribute with $250 million each with the option to contribute later with $500 million more each. The total funding could then be $1.5 billion.

The two companies will leverage their strengths to make the most of their collaboration. Both Arthur D. Levinson, Calico’s founder and CEO, and Richard A. Gonzalez, AbbVie’s CEO and chairman of the board, expressed their satisfaction with this deal but how will it work?

In this collaboration Calico will use its expertise to create a world-class research center dedicated to the discovery of new drugs. This will go on for the first five years and then Calico will keep on developing collaborative projects in the second phase for a period of ten years. AbbVie will provide its scientific and clinical support and commercial knowledge to bring new discoveries to the market.

Last year, Larry Page spoke especially of the many cases of cancer and how defeating it would add three years to the average life expectancy. There are also other diseases that primarily affect the elderly such as Alzheimer’s disease, a highly disabling condition that reduces a person in the shadow of herself long before her death.

Calico was opened as a long-term project and it will probably take a few years to see the results of the new research center. This collaboration shows how Google wants to invest in this type of project. A year ago doubts were advanced because the statements were generic, now a lot of money is coming in collaboration with a big-pharma industry. Everything’s becoming very real, including hope for suffering people.

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