AbbVie links with Calico in up to $1.5 billion effort on drug discovery

4 September 2014

US pharma company AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) has entered a novel R&D collaboration with recently-formed Calico, intended to help the two companies discover, develop and bring to market new therapies for patients with age-related diseases, including for neurodegeneration and cancer. The companies will co-invest as much as $1.5 billion on the alliance.

Calico (California Life Sciences) is the Google-backed life sciences company, set up last September that is led by Arthur Levinson (former chairman and chief executive of Roche biotech subsidiary Genentech) and Hal Barron (former executive vice president and chief medical officer of Genentech).

The agreement paves the way for Calico to establish a world-class R&D facility in the San Francisco Bay Area. Calico expects to begin filling critical positions immediately and plans to establish a substantial team of scientists and research staff in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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