Associate Director

Calico and Nexo enter into collaboration to discover and develop small molecule therapies for age-related diseases. South San Francisco, Calif., and Watertown, Mass., May 21, 2026 - Calico Life Sciences LLC (Calico), a clinical-stage biotechnology organization focused on aging and age-related diseases and founded by Alphabet Inc. and Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D., and Nexo Therapeutics Inc. (Nexo), today announced a multi-target collaboration to discover and develop small molecule therapeutics for challenging disease targets. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will jointly pursue targets nominated by Calico, leveraging Nexo's expertise and proprietary platform to identify and optimize small molecule candidates. Calico will lead further development and commercialization of programs emerging from the collaboration. "We are pleased to partner with Nexo to explore new approaches to targeting challenging disease biology," said Jonathan W. Lewis, Ph.D., Chief Business Officer at Calico. "As Calico continues to advance its early pipeline and build new collaborations, we are focused on pairing our deep understanding of aging biology with partners who can help accelerate the translation of our insights into new therapeutics. Nexo's integrated platform offers a compelling approach to defining pharmacology and enabling the discovery of novel small molecule therapies for historically undruggable or hard-to-drug targets." Nexo's platform combines advanced chemistry and chemical biology to expand what can be targeted with small molecule therapies. Its CODON engine uses a proprietary covalent library and proteomics to identify and optimize compounds. These capabilities establish target profiles early in discovery, helping guide medicinal chemistry and accelerate development towards the clinic. "For too many people, there are still no therapies that address the fundamental drivers of their disease," said Rhamy Zeid, Chief Scientific Officer at Nexo. "To expand what is druggable, Nexo is working at the intersection of target biology and ligand discovery to pursue therapies against elusive targets. This collaboration allows us to pair those capabilities with Calico's deep expertise in disease biology and advance small molecule candidates not accessible through traditional approaches." About Calico Calico (Calico Life Sciences LLC) is an Alphabet-founded research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies and model systems to increase its understanding of the biology that controls human aging. Calico will use that knowledge to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. To learn more about Calico, visit www.calicolabs.com. Follow @calico on LinkedIn, X, and YouTube. About Nexo Nexo Therapeutics Inc. is a small-molecule company dedicated to the discovery and development of new drugs for patients who currently lack meaningful therapies. Nexo combines covalent ligand discovery and chemical biology with expertise in biology and medicinal chemistry to target fundamental drivers of disease by innovative approaches. For more information, please visit www.nexotx.com. Media Contact

AbbVie exits alliance with Alphabet biotech Calico; report. Reports are emerging that a multibillion-dollar partnership between AbbVie and Alphabet-backed biotech Calico has come to an end after more than a decade. The divorce - first report by Stat - comes just a few days after Calico issued a press release that celebrated the FDA award of orphan drug status to ABBV-CLS-628, an AbbVie-partnered programme in phase 2 testing for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) that has also been fast-tracked by the US regulator. The alliance between AbbVie and Calico dates back to 2014, just a year after it was launched by Alphabet's Google unit, when the two companies pledged up to $1.5 billion to a joint effort to develop treatments for age-related diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders and cancer. It was expanded in 2018 and again in 2021 to a potential value of $3.5 billion, with Calico responsible for taking projects into early clinical development until 2025 and running phase 2a trials until 2030, with AbbVie having an option to take over projects once they reach later-stage development and to lead commercial activities. However, after more than 11 years and an investment of more than $1.75 billion, the partners have yet to score a regulatory approval for a new medicine. Just last month, Calico appointed AbbVie's former head of global medicinal chemistry, Philip Kym, for the newly created role of head of drug discovery, in a further sign of how closely the two companies have been working. According to Stat, AbbVie's change of heart - revealed in a series of internal emails - is a result of shift in strategy at the pharma group away from small-molecule drugs and towards more complex genetic medicines and will lead to around 100 employees losing their jobs. AbbVie has not commented on the status of its relationship with Calico. If confirmed, the separation also follows disappointing results with another AbbVie-partnered programme - fosigotifator (ABBV-CLS-7262) for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - earlier this year. Data from an arm of the HEALEY ALS Platform Trial found no evidence for any impact on ALS disease progression with fosigotifator, an eIF2B activator, as well as secondary measures like ALS symptoms, respiratory function, and quality-of-life scores. Other partnered projects include ABBV-CLS-484, a PTN1/2 inhibitor in early-stage clinical testing as a potential cancer immunotherapy. Meanwhile, a recent decision to in-license an antibody-based IL-11 inhibitor (9MW3811) for fibrotic diseases from China's Mabwell Bioscience, rather than continue to rely on its in-house discovery engine, has also been viewed in some quarters as a sign that Calico has not been firing on all cylinders.