Google Hires High-Profile Geneticist To Aid In Search For "Fountain Of Youth"

By Jof Enriquez,
Follow me on Twitter @jofenriq

Google’s anti-aging Calico project received a major boost this week with the news that geneticist Cynthia Kenyon is formally joining its ranks. Kenyon, who has been an advisor for the project since its inception last year, formally left the University of California, San Francisco this month to join an elite team at Calico led by Apple and Genentech chairman Arthur Levinson. She will also be working with fellow high-profile scientists Hal V. Barron (Roche/Genentech), David Botstein (Princeton University), and Robert Cohen (Genentech).

Announced in September last year, Calico’s focus is on addressing the challenge of aging and associated diseases. Google CEO Larry Page described its project as the product of “moonshot thinking” and a “longer-term bet” that could one day help millions of people, particularly the estimated 20 percent of Americans who will be aged 65 and above by 2050.

By bringing Kenyon on board, Google "really wants to pull together initially a very small group of people who have worldwide reputations," George Geis, an adjunct professor who specializes in technology mergers and acquisitions at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, told The San Francisco Chronicle. “Cynthia clearly does,” he added.

Kenyon is known for her work in extending the life span of nematode worms by partially disabling the daf-2 gene that controls aging. Later experiments involving flies and mice supported her group’s finding. Researchers hope that the daf-2 gene may hold the key to aging in humans, since there is an increased incidence of mutation in the gene among people who live to 100 years of age. By delaying the aging process, Kenyon believes age-related diseases can also be postponed, she told the Chronicle. Studying this mechanism could lead to the development of drugs to cure conditions such as cancer or Alzheimer’s disease.

Kenyon was previously involved in an endeavor to formulate such drugs at Elixir Technologies, a company that was eventually shuttered in 2010. The scientist may be ready to try again, this time using Google’s vast resources. However, at this point it is not clear if that is Calico’s plan, and how it will go about its work. In an email to the Chronicle, Kenyon wrote, "Calico is still sorting out directions and priorities and is not yet in a position to be talking about itself." 

Image Credit: “Google.” Carlos Luna. © 2008 (CC by 2.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/