A mon­ster dis­cov­ery deal be­tween Ab­b­Vie and Google’s Cal­i­co gets a new lease on the lab, with $1B more to back ag­ing re­search

Near­ly 4 years af­ter Ab­b­Vie and Google’s fledg­ling Cal­i­co stepped up to the al­tar of drug sci­ence and com­mit­ted them­selves to a $1.5 bil­lion part­ner­ship on de­vel­op­ing a pipeline of an­ti-ag­ing drugs, they’ve de­cid­ed to re­new their vows.

And this time they’re back­ing it up with a joint $1 bil­lion pledge — $500 mil­lion each — to keep the al­liance go­ing for some years to come, with an eye to slow­ly step­ping up the re­la­tion­ship in a move to­ward the clin­ic. In a rare pub­lic dis­play of af­fec­tion, the two com­pa­nies are tout­ing the ad­vance of more than two dozen late dis­cov­ery projects, with a spe­cial fo­cus on cel­lu­lar stress that they be­lieve has some pro­found long term im­pli­ca­tions for hu­man health. 

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