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Old as time: What we can learn from past attempts to treat aging

Nature Medicine volume 20, pages 1362–1364 (2014)Cite this article

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The quest to end aging, rife with bizarre and doomed therapies, is perhaps as old as humanity itself. And even though researchers today have more sophisticated tools for studying aging, the hunt for drugs to prevent human decay has still seen many false leads.

Now, the field hopes to improve its track record with the entrance of two new players, Calico, which launched in September 2013, and Human Longevity, which entered the stage six months later. South San Francisco–based Calico, founded by Google with an initial commitment of at least $250 million, boasts an all-star slate of biotechnology industry leaders such as Genentech alums Art Levinson and Hal Barron and aging researchers David Botstein and Cynthia Kenyon. Human Longevity was founded by genome pioneer Craig Venter and hopes to use a big data approach to combat age-related disease.

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  1. Erika Check Hayden is a reporter for Nature in San Francisco.,

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Hayden, E. Old as time: What we can learn from past attempts to treat aging. Nat Med 20, 1362–1364 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1214-1362

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