January 8, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Seattle-based Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation announced yesterday that it will acquire South San Francisco-based Sequenta in a cash-and-stock deal. Although specific details are not yet available, Adaptive raised $94 million in private equity cash to support the acquisition.
The combined companies will have a value of $500 million. Sequenta shareholders will acquire a minority equity share in the combined company.
“Our mission is to change the course of medicine through sequencing a patient’s adaptive immune system,” said Adaptive chief executive Chad Robins in a statement. “Over the past few months it has become increasingly clear that joining forces with Sequenta will accelerate our ability to make the promise of more immunosequencing a reality for physicians and patients. By combining our resources, we can increase the number of clinical trials we are able to run to validate clinical applications of immunosequencing, and explore new and innovative research and development initiatives that neither of us would have been able to do.”
Adaptive utilizes a patent-pending technology that utilizes high-throughput gene sequencing with computer infrastructure that allows scientists to minutely analyze T-cell receptors (TCR). Prior to this breakthrough, it was possible to catalog about 30,000 unique TCRs out of 100 million. The new tech allows scientists to identify 10 to 15 million in a single individual.
Sequenta has an overlapping system, the LymphoSIGHT Platform, which is a scalable next-generation sequencing-based laboratory process that allows scientists to characterize and quantify millions of B and T cells. The combined systems have the potential to revolutionize medicine by getting individual’s immune system “profiled,” providing significant insight into potential responses to infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders and cancer.
“You can imagine getting an immune-system checkup every few years,” said president of R&D at Infinity Pharmaceuticals , Julian Adams, in a recent article. “Getting to this level of precision really changes how you would be evaluated. It could be almost like how you have your cholesterol checked. You could ask, ‘What is the state of your immune system?’”
Adaptive’s list of customers has included Bristol-Myers Squibb , Pfizer , AstraZeneca , and Juno Therapeutics . Sequenta focused more on diagnostic applications, rather than research clients. Sequenta started in September 2008 as an incubator project at Mohr Davidow Ventures and drew in $40 million from investors, including Celgene , Illumina , Index Ventures, Foresite Capital and others.
Both companies are private, so specific financial details are not disclosed. Sequenta’s co-founders, Malek Faham and Tom Willis, will be joining the merged companies in executive roles and report to Sequenta’s Chad Robins.
“What we’re doing is very innovative, and [the deal] is a recognition that immune sequencing is incredibly important, and will be incredibly important, for lots of indications,” said Sequenta chairman John Stuelpnagel in a statement. “To fully capitalize on it, we really need scale.”
