{"id":473763,"date":"2010-03-26T03:20:27","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T07:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=70484"},"modified":"2010-03-26T03:20:27","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T07:20:27","slug":"adaptive-tcr-a-fred-hutch-spinoff-nabs-4-5m-to-uncover-immune-system-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/473763","title":{"rendered":"Adaptive TCR, a Fred Hutch Spinoff, Nabs $4.5M to Uncover Immune System Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Biotech<\/a>, VC<\/a>, startups<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"adaptive\"<\/a>
\n\t\tLuke Timmerman wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Seattle experts in computer science and immunology are rallying around a new spinoff company from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.<\/p>\n

Seattle-based Adaptive TCR<\/a> has nailed down a $4.5 million<\/a> round of angel investment to get up and running, Xconomy has learned. The basic concept is to provide scientists with a high-speed, high-resolution look into the vast diversity of T-cells of the adaptive immune system that we all produce to ward off infections, and which sometimes go awry and cause disease.<\/p>\n

This company wasn’t backed by the usual venture capital suspects in Seattle biotech, and it has an unusual backstory. Adaptive’s scientific co-founders are a pair of Hutch researchers who are first-time entrepreneurs in their 30s: Harlan Robins<\/a>, a particle physicist who turned to genomics a decade ago to tackle its daunting math, and Chris Carlson<\/a>, a geneticist and molecular biologist. Chad Robins<\/a>, Harlan’s brother, has signed on as the founding president and CEO. Chad, who has a Wharton School business degree and experience with investment banking and hedge funds, wrote the original business plan and tapped his Rolodex to raise the company’s seed capital.<\/p>\n

The founding scientific advisory board includes some big names. They include Arnold Levine<\/a> of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ; Gerald Nepom<\/a>, the director of the Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle; Edus Houston Warren<\/a> of the University of Washington and Fred Hutch, as well as two other prominent genetic researchers from the UW who aren’t being named yet.\"hutchlogo1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“I’ve been talking to my brother for 20 years, and saying ‘You’re a smart guy, when are we going to do a business together?’” Chad Robins says. “He’s never been interested before. Then he called me last February.”<\/p>\n

That was a little over a year ago. Now the business is taking shape with a founding team of four employees who have subleased some office space in South Lake Union from VLST.<\/p>\n

Adaptive TCR is built on using high-speed gene sequencing instruments that capture data from biological samples, and combining it with some pretty heavy duty math that’s executed by proprietary software.<\/p>\n

The problem is certainly complicated enough to excite a string theorist like Harlan Robins. While scientists know that the 3 billion letters of DNA that make up a genome are consistent in every human cell, that’s not a fixed number that applies to immune system T-cells. The DNA in T-cells gets shuffled as they mature, allowing the cells to recognize a foreign invader like a virus. Humans have evolved an ability to adapt to these invaders, by building up a vast repertoire of T-cells with memory for a certain pathogen. This vast array of T-cell variation is something that scientists haven’t been able …Next Page »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Biotech, VC, startups Luke Timmerman wrote: Seattle experts in computer science and immunology are rallying around a new spinoff company from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Seattle-based Adaptive TCR has nailed down a $4.5 million round of angel investment to get up and running, Xconomy has learned. The basic concept is to provide scientists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}