NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Adaptive Biotechnologies today announced it raised $105 million in private funding, which will allow it to expand its immunosequencing research platform and clinical diagnostic products.
Viking Global Investors contributed $5 million to complete Adaptive Bio's Series C financing round and $100 million into its Series D round. Viking was the sole investor in the Series D financing and will take an observer seat on Adaptive Bio's board, Seattle-based Adaptive Bio said.
It has raised a total of $120 million, it added.
Spun out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Adaptive Bio leverages next-generation sequencing to profile T-cell and B-cell receptors.
The funds will initially be used to launch a research-use-only kit for its immunoSeq platform in the third quarter, which would allow its customers to use the instrument in-house. Funds will also go toward expansion of the clonoSeq diagnostic product for monitoring relapse in patients with certain blood cancers. The test for assessing minimal residual disease was launched last year.
Lastly, Adaptive Bio plans to validate and launch a second clinical test called quanTILfy for interrogating tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in solid tumors for prognosis. The company also plans to launch the test as a potential predictive biomarker of response to treatment with oncology immunotherapies.
During the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in January, Adaptive Bio Co-founder and CEO Chad Robins said the firm anticipates launching quanTILfy in the second quarter of 2015 for solid tumors and in the fourth quarter of 2015 for predicting response to immunotherapeutics. Robins added that it plans to launch in the second quarter of 2016 an assay for monitoring patients' immune system following transplantation.
"The creation of data to influence clinical care represents the next wave of opportunity, and these proceeds will allow us to build our organization with top talent in all key areas from research to sales and to further commercialize our platforms and applications," Robins said in a statement today.