Google Partners with Ancestry.com to Study Aging
Calico, the two-year-old life sciences company backed by Google, struck a deal with DNA testing service AncestryDNA on July 22 to gain access to anonymized genetic information to help with Calico’s research on aging.
AncestryDNA is a subsidiary of family tree website Ancestry.com. The organization sells $99 DNA testing kits and has “has genotyped the DNA sequence of over one million customers,” writes Re/code.
The announcement explains Calico’s scientists will sift through Ancestry’s database to analyze longevity patterns found in families with relatives who have lived an extraordinarily long time.
Ken Chahine, Ancestry’s executive vice president and head of DNA and health, told Bloomberg News, “If you aggregate a set of individuals who had long-lived families and we have their genetic information as well, that’s to start making hypotheses about the heritability of longevity.”
Essentially, the goal of this endeavor is to understand these trends and potentially commercialize and develop drugs to help other people prolong their lifespans.
Calico’s collaboration with Ancestry is similar to a partnership the biotech firm made with Harvard and MIT’s Broad Institute in March 2015. All three parties agreed to work together on studying the “biology and genetics of aging” to gain better insight into diseases like hypertension and atherosclerosis.
Data-related drug discovery and development is becoming a growing trend. Ancestry’s competitor 23andMe is another biotech company that’s using a large genetic database to create potential cures for diseases like Parkinson’s and Lupus.
No financial details were disclosed for this deal.
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