Broad Institute Announces Partnership with Calico

The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT announced a partnership last week with Calico, a life sciences company backed by Google, to advance research on age-related diseases and therapeutics.

Eric Lander, president and director of the Broad Institute, said in the press release announcing the partnership that the collaboration will foster progress on the understanding and treatment of age-related disease by combining the Institute’s scientific knowledge with Calico’s expertise in therapeutics.

Much of the Institute’s work focuses on uncovering the genetic basis of major diseases and brings together researchers from Harvard, MIT, Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and other partner institutions.

Calico Life Sciences LLC, short for California Life Company, is a biotech research and development company with the aim of building understanding of aging and its associated diseases. The company is currently led by CEO Arthur D. Levinson, the former CEO of Genentech and a former director at Google. Calico was founded by Levinson and Google.

"This alliance is a key part of Calico's strategy to bring the best cutting-edge science to bear on problems of aging,” Levinson said in the press release.

The Broad Institute has a wide range of collaborations, including more than 100 projects across more than 40 countries, according to its website. Last year, researchers at the Institute discovered several gene mutations that potentially protect against type 2 diabetes.

Paul Goldsmith, a spokesperson for the Broad Institute, declined to release more details regarding the collaboration because it is still in a developmental stage.

—Staff Writer Zara Zhang can be reached at zara.zhang@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter at @zarazhangrui.