Disappointingly, but expectedly, the stub website for Calico further reinforces the point that they are not likely to soon take any path that will produce meaningful results for human longevity. They are following the Longevity Dividend [0] approach in essence, which at the high level aims to increase understanding of the intersection of genetics, metabolism, and aging to produce ways to slow aging gently. Ambition here is to aim for an increase of 7 years of life expectancy over the next two decades, a figure given a couple of times by Jay Olshansky. Examples of research include work on sirtuins, that has consumed a billion dollars and produced nothing of use, and other attempts to produce caloric restriction mimetic drugs. The near future in the Longevity Dividend vision is basically more of the same: vastly expensive attempts to alter the operation of metabolism in order to slow down aging.

Genetics is hot, and it is easy to raise funds for nowadays. See the launch of Venter's Human Longevity Inc, for example. But I see this in connection with work on longevity as looking for the keys under the lamp, because that is where the light is, not because it is where you are likely to obtain results. The comparative genetics of human longevity should be irrelevant to work on aging: we all age because of the occurrence of the same forms of cellular and molecular damage. Outside of rare mutations, genetics has nothing to do with that - the same damage happens to everyone. The target should be repair of that damage, not trying to expensively slightly slow the pace at which it arrives.

That the metabolic manipulation approach to treating aging has such popularity despite the lack of results is a mystery. The other way, the repair approach, has the same lack of results - but that is because next to no money is heading in that direction. We have the early demonstration that targeted removal of senescent cells extends life in accelerated aging mice [1], for example, and ample reason to believe it is beneficial for ordinary individuals, but it took philanthropic funding to move that research forward at all. Institutions want to see standard issue drug development and manipulation of metabolism because it is the mainstream of medicine and the expected thing: the round peg for the round hole of regulation. This has nothing at all to do with whether it is the best path forward.

This all further points to the fact that if we want to see meaningful results in longevity science, measured in years of health gained for people who are already old, then we need to produce results that demonstrate the futility of the mainstream path taken by Google, the sirtuin researchers, and Human Longevity Inc, etc, and deonstrate that repair approaches can do far more for far less money. The senescent cell targeting is probably the closest work to that point.

Based on what I've seen of Calico to date, I'm expecting it to be a more publicized version of the Ellison Medical Foundation as an initiative: an extension of work already taking place at the NIA and in companies like Human Longevity Inc, and something that fails to step outside that box. It will produce general benefits in terms of data and knowledge, and absolutely fail to meaningfully extend human life. This will continue until someone changes the approach to this work to focus on repair of the causes of aging [2] rather than metabolic tinkering to slow aging. The latter is a slow road to marginal end results that can do next to nothing to help the people who grew old waiting for them to arrive.

[0]: https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/10/advocating-the-l...

[1]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10600

[2]: http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research