Opening New Paths in Aging Research

In medicine, there are few problems as complex — or as far-reaching in their impact — as aging. The biological processes behind aging often shape how long people can live in good health. At Calico Life Sciences, AI/ML Lead Matt Onsum and Chief Scientist Katherine Labbé are using Co-Scientist to connect research findings scattered across aging biology and turn them into testable hypotheses.

That is no easy task, because the biological literature is full of findings of uneven quality, dead ends, and irreproducible experimental results. According to Onsum, Co-Scientist has impressed Calico’s experts with its scientific judgment, helping them cut through this noise and identify new ideas worth pursuing.

One example is Calico’s work on the integrated stress response (ISR). ISR is a mechanism that protects cells, but when it remains active for too long, it can also contribute to disease. Using Co-Scientist, the Calico team generated a novel but plausible hypothesis: that ISR may be regulated by metabolism. Metabolism is known to change with age and in many diseases. The researchers then worked with Co-Scientist to refine the experimental design for testing this hypothesis, feeding in new information as results came in. Those experiments produced new findings that are important for understanding the role of ISR in health and disease, and the team plans to publish the results in a paper.

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What surprised and excited me about using Co-Scientist was how much it thinks like a scientist. It fits so naturally with the ways scientists already think and work.

Katherine Labbé, PhD, Chief Scientist

Calico Life Sciences

Seeing how Co-Scientist can synthesize all the information around us and help us better unravel the mysteries of aging made this feel like one of the boldest and most groundbreaking challenges I can imagine.

Matt Onsum, PhD, AI/ML Lead

Calico Life Sciences