Date: Sep 01, 2015 Source: Wall Street Journal (
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Adaptive Biotechnologies
As of September 2015:
Latest valuation: $1.0b (May 2015)
Total equity funding: $425m
Valuation-to-funding: 2.4 to 1
Rounds of funding (current): 6
Location: Seattle
Founded in 2009
CEO: Chad Robins (co-founder)
Competitors: Atreca Inc., AbVitro Inc.
Investors: Alexandria Real Estate Equities, BD Biosciences, Casdin Capital, Celgene, Illumina, Lab Corp. of America Holdings, Matrix Capital Management, Rock Springs Capital, Senator Investment Group, Tiger Management, Viking Global Investors
Brothers Chad and Harlan Robins in 2009 combined their business and biological expertise to found Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp., a startup that's cashed in on a resurgence in the "immuno-oncology" market to become one of the most well-funded private companies in biotech.
Chad, former chief operating officer of a Chicago hedge fund, joined with Harlan, a computational biologist, to spin Adaptive out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Adaptive has since drawn attention from investors, drug makers and scientists because of its potential to predict which patients will benefit from new immuno-oncology therapeutics, which engage the immune system in the fight against cancer.
Immuno-oncology therapies are prolonging the lives of some people with melanoma and other cancers, but they don't work for everyone. Medicines like Merck & Co.'s Keytruda and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Opdivo remove a brake on the immune system. But for patients to benefit, their immune system must be sufficiently primed for the fight. Adaptive is developing a diagnostic to predict which patients will mount an effective immune response when treated with "checkpoint inhibitor" therapies, like Keytruda and Opdivo.
Adaptive's approach involves using high-throughput DNA sequencing to create molecular profiles of receptors found on two workhorses of the immune system, T cells and B cells. The technology also applies to a type of immuno-therapy that uses T cells to attack a patient's cancer. Adaptive has partnered with companies like Juno Therapeutics Inc. to help them determine if their T-cell therapy is working in a given patient and to monitor the treatment's efficacy.
Adaptive is expanding by launching a therapeutics group to develop infectious-disease drugs and to form collaborations to advance cancer treatments. The move could present new challenges for the company. Diagnostics and drug-development are very different businesses, so most startups stick to one or the other. But Chad, Adaptive's chief executive, said he sees enough synergy among the company's various operations to keep them all under one roof for now.
-Brian Gormley (Aug. 2015)
