adpt-10k_20201231.htm

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, DC 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020

For the transition period from _____to _____

Commission File Number: 001-38957

ADAPTIVE BIOTECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION

(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter)

1551 Eastlake Avenue East, Suite 200 Seattle, Washington 98102

(Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (206)659-0067

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Title of each class Trading Symbol(s) Name of each exchange on which registered

Common stock, par value $0.0001 per share ADPT The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes☒No☐

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. Yes☐No☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes☒No☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files). Yes☒No☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

Large accelerated filer ☒ Accelerated filer ☐

Non-accelerated filer ☐ Smaller reporting company ☐

Emerging growth company ☐

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the Registrant, based on the closing price of the shares of common stock on The NASDAQ Global Select Market on June 30, 2020 (the last business day of the Registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter), was approximately $3,590,000,000.

As of February 19, 2021, the Registrant had 139,219,503 shares of common stock, $0.0001 par value per share, outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

The information required by Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, to the extent not set forth herein, is incorporated herein by reference from the registrant’s definitive proxy statement relating to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held in 2021.

Table of Contents

Page

PART I 3

Item 1. Business 3

Item 1A. Risk Factors 43

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments 88

Item 2. Properties 88

Item 3. Legal Proceedings 88

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 88

Item 6. Selected Financial Data 89

Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 101

Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data 102

Item 9A. Controls and Procedures 133

Item 9B. Other Information 135

Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance 136

Item 11. Executive Compensation 136

Item 14. Principal Accounting Fees and Services 136

Item 15. Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules 137

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements that are based on management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. Some of the statements in the “Business,” “Risk Factors,” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” sections and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K contain forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: “may,” “will,” “could,” “would,” “should,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “project,” “potential,” “continue,” “ongoing” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words.

These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Although we believe we have a reasonable basis for each forward-looking statement contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, we caution you that these statements are based on a combination of facts and factors currently known by us and our projections of the future, about which we cannot be certain. Forward-looking statements expressed or implied in this Annual Report on Form 10-K include, but are not limited to, statements about:

• the rate and degree of market acceptance of our products and services;

• our financial performance;

• regulatory developments in the United States (“U.S.”) and foreign countries;

• developments relating to our competitors and our industry;

• our ability to attract and retain key scientific or management personnel;

• the impact of laws and regulations; and

In addition, you should refer to the “Risk Factors” section of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of other important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. As a result of these factors, we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K will prove to be accurate. Furthermore, if the forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. In light of the significant uncertainties in these forward-looking statements, you should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by us or any other person that we will achieve our objectives and plans in any specified time frame, or at all. The forward-looking statements herein represent our views as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We anticipate that subsequent events and developments will cause our views to change. However, while we may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we have no current intention of doing so except to the extent required by applicable law. You should, therefore, not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

In this Annual Report on Form 10-K, unless the context requires otherwise, all references to “we,” “our,” “us,” “Adaptive” and the “Company” refer to Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation.

PART I

Item 1. Business

Overview

We are advancing the field of immune medicine by harnessing the inherent biology of the adaptive immune system to transform the diagnosis and treatment of disease. We believe the adaptive immune system is nature’s most finely tuned diagnostic and therapeutic for most diseases, but the inability to decode it has prevented the medical community from fully leveraging its capabilities. Our immune medicine platform applies our proprietary technologies to read the diverse genetic code of a patient’s immune system and aims to understand precisely how the immune system detects and treats disease in that patient. We capture these insights in our dynamic clinical immunomics database, which is underpinned by computational biology and machine learning, and use these insights to develop and commercialize clinical products and services that we are tailoring to each individual patient. We have three commercial products and services and a robust pipeline of clinical products and services that we are designing to diagnose, monitor and enable the treatment of diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions and infectious diseases. Since our inception in 2009, we have characterized over 58 billion immune receptors, established partnerships and commercial relationships with 175 biopharmaceutical companies and launched three product lines. Our goal is to understand the adaptive immune system and translate it into new products with unprecedented scale, precision and speed.

Our immune medicine platform is the foundation for our expanding suite of products and services. The cornerstone of our platform and core immunosequencing product, immunoSEQ, serves as our underlying research and development engine and generates revenue from academic and biopharmaceutical customers. Our first clinical diagnostic product, clonoSEQ, is the first test authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) for the detection and monitoring of minimal residual disease (“MRD”) in patients with multiple myeloma (“MM”), B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (“ALL”) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (“CLL”) and is also available as a CLIA-validated laboratory developed test (“LDT”) for patients with other lymphoid cancers. Leveraging our collaboration with Microsoft Corporation (“Microsoft”), we are creating a map of the interaction between the immune system and disease (“TCR-Antigen Map”). We are using this map to develop research solutions by disease called immunoSEQ T-MAP and a diagnostic product for many diseases from a single blood test called T-Detect. T-Detect was formerly known as immunoSEQ Dx. T-Detect COVID, for which we have applied for Emergency Use Authorization (“EUA”), confirms past SARS-CoV-2 infection, the virus that causes COVID-19, and is also the first indication for the T-Detect product line. We are finalizing clinical validation of T-Detect for Lyme disease and continue to pursue signals for other disease states in parallel. Our therapeutic product candidates, being developed under our collaboration agreement with Genentech, Inc. (“Genentech”), leverage our platform to identify specific receptors on immune cells to develop into cellular therapies in oncology. We believe this approach has the potential to be applicable to patients across a wide range of cancers. We also extended our platform to identify highly potent neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and we believe this differentiated approach may be leveraged across multiple disease states.

Immune medicine is one of the largest global addressable markets in healthcare. We estimate the potential market opportunity for our portfolio to be $54.7 billion, including $1.0 billion for research products, $22.3 billion for clinical diagnostics and $31.4 billion for cellular therapy in oncology. We use multiple sources and assumptions to estimate the total addressable market for immune medicine. While we believe them to be reasonable, these sources and assumptions may be incorrect or subject to change due to any number of factors. In particular, the indications we choose to commercialize for T-Detect may vary depending on ongoing signal validation and market considerations. In addition, our drug discovery initiatives are still in the early stages of development and the market opportunity excludes neutralizing antibodies, which may make our assumptions and estimates more uncertain. Despite the novelty of this area, we believe we are uniquely positioned to develop and commercialize a pipeline of immune-driven diagnostic and therapeutic products across multiple disease states by leveraging the cumulative learning from our immune medicine platform.

Despite operating with challenges presented by the global COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to achieve and progress towards many key milestones in 2020 in each business area:

Our Immune Medicine Platform

The adaptive immune system is comprised of specialized cells, called T cells and B cells, which hold the instructions for diagnosing and treating most diseases. These instructions enable these cells to identify, bind and destroy pathogens or human cells presenting foreign signals of disease (“antigens”) using receptors on their cell surface. Unlike all other genes in the human genome, the genetic sequences of TCRs and B cell receptors (“BCRs”) rearrange over time creating massive genetic diversity. The resulting diversity of the adaptive immune repertoire, which consists of over 100 million different genes in a healthy adult compared to approximately 30,000 genes in the static human genome, gives the immune system the ability to detect and respond to millions of different antigens associated with human disease.

Our immune medicine platform combines a suite of proprietary chemistry, computational biology and machine learning to generate clinical immunomics data to decode the adaptive immune system. It extracts and interprets insights from the adaptive immune system with the scale, precision and speed required to enable the design of clinical products tailored to the specific genetics of each patient’s immune system.

Our immune medicine platform performs the following key functions related to immune receptors:

The massive amount of data generated by our immune medicine platform is stored in our dynamic clinical immunomics database of over 58 billion immune receptors. We believe the application of machine learning, supported by our collaboration with Microsoft, has the potential to exponentially accelerate our ability to derive novel insights from this database and use them to inform our robust product development efforts.

The current coronavirus pandemic is highlighting the critical importance of understanding the immune response to disease broadly, making our technology more relevant than ever. We are focused on translating the genetic language of the adaptive immune system into clinical products to diagnose and treat disease, and we are committed to leveraging our immune medicine platform to support the efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

By elucidating immune receptor data specific to SARS-CoV-2, we developed multiple products. In our research business, for the first time, we offered a product that not only sequences, but also maps the immune response to the virus. This product, called immunoSEQ T-MAP COVID, provides a better way for vaccine developers and researchers to include the T-cell response in their studies. We are pleased to see top-tier vaccine developers recognizing the power of this product. Leveraging the same data, we launched a clinical diagnostic called T-Detect COVID to confirm past infection. In addition, we created an antibody discovery platform to find highly potent neutralizing antibodies against COVID-19 that is applicable not only to the current pandemic, but also in the unfortunate event of future pandemics and other diseases states. Importantly, we believe we can leverage what we accomplished for COVID-19 using disease-specific immune receptor data across other disease states going forward.

We believe COVID-19 brought the role of the immune system to the forefront of society and has created the opportunity for us to be positioned as the “go to” company to rapidly and reproducibly assess the T-cell response to any pathogen, including future pandemics.

Our Current Products and Pipeline

Life Sciences Research

Our immunoSEQ research service and kits are used to answer translational research questions and discover new prognostic and diagnostic signals. Our technology has been used for research purposes by over 2,400 academic researchers and 175 biopharmaceutical companies and incorporated into over 650 clinical trials since our inception in 2009. We have completed development of a next generation, sample-type agnostic research use only (“RUO”) kit that has been selected by 35 academic core labs and user groups in the United States and we continue to expand these collaborations. Additionally, we announced our first distribution agreement with two CROs, Q2 Solutions and Labcorp, and we are in discussions with several others. By enabling academic core labs and CROs as centers of excellence with our gold standard immunoSEQ RUO kit, we expect to set the foundation for long term growth going forward. Importantly, immunoSEQ is analytically validated so that all research data generated using immunoSEQ can be used for clinical validation of potential diagnostic applications.

We launched immunoSEQ T-MAP COVID in August 2020 for vaccine developers and researchers to accurately and reproducibly measure the T-cell immune response to vaccines and track the persistence of that response over time. A key objective with T-MAP COVID is to answer many outstanding questions about durability of COVID-19 vaccines, especially in light of new variants of the virus. Our T-MAP product offers significant advantages over other technologies to detect and monitor T cells at scale using a small amount of blood without the need for live cells that require special sample handling.

To date, we have sequenced a subset of patient samples (pre- and post-vaccination) from clinical trials sponsored by several top-tier vaccine developers, including AZ, University of Oxford, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and several prestigious academic labs who are studying the impact of COVID-19 vaccines on patients receiving other immune-mediated therapies. Using our immunoSEQ T-MAP COVID product, we can identify and track expanded T cells induced by a vaccine, which can be distinguished from a natural infection, in order to monitor vaccine efficacy. In vaccinated subjects who test positive for the virus utilizing the two-step multiplex polymerase chain reaction (“PCR”) amplification process, immunoSEQ T-MAP COVID can specifically track vaccine-induced T cells and correlate response with improved patient outcomes. In addition, we are also in late-stage discussions with several companies developing next-generation vaccines.

In the fourth quarter of 2020,we entered into our first multi-year immunoSEQ T-MAP cancer collaboration with AZ to generate data from antigen-specific T-cell immune responses across AZ’s oncology drug portfolio. T-MAP data may inform early disease intervention to help improve patient outcomes, with the potential for additional partnership opportunities to develop companion diagnostics or novel therapeutics with AZ. The partnership also allows for data sharing between usand AZthatbenefits our independent efforts. We expect thiswill help expedite our ability to map the large antigenic space in cancer.

Clinical Diagnostics

Our clonoSEQ diagnostic test detects and monitors the remaining number of cancer cells that are present in a patient’s body during and after treatment, known as MRD. In September 2018, clonoSEQ was granted marketing authorization from the FDA, under the de novo process, for patients with MM and ALL to monitor their MRD from bone marrow samples. In August 2020, the clonoSEQ label was expanded to include patients with CLL from bone marrow and blood samples. clonoSEQ is also available for use in other lymphoid cancers as an LDT. In January 2019, clonoSEQ received Medicare coverage aligned with the FDA label and National Comprehensive Cancer Network (“NCCN”) guidelines for longitudinal monitoring in MM and ALL. Throughout 2019 and 2020, we secured additional payor coverage for clonoSEQ aligned with our FDA label with Medicare, national private payors and large regional plans for a total of over 225 million covered lives for ALL and MM and over 110 million covered lives for CLL. clonoSEQ testing has been ordered by clinicians for over 15,000 unique patients and used by more than 40 biopharmaceutical companies in over 190 clinical trials. We continue to deepen our commercial investments to expand clinical adoption of clonoSEQ and have increased the size of our specialized sales and customer support organization and supporting infrastructure in the United States, and we have successfully transferred the technology to seven labs in other parts of the world. We also signed a co-promotion agreement with Labcorp to leverage their growing oncology salesforce to expand our commercial reach and further deepen our market penetration. We believe clonoSEQ has broad applicability across all lymphoid malignancies. We recently submitted a 510(k) premarket notification for ALL from blood samples in February 2021 and are actively advancing validation studies in certain non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (“NHL”) sub-types. We are also awaiting results from a clinical study using clonoSEQ to assess MRD in blood for multiple myeloma. Importantly, we have also implemented collaborations with Labcorp and Phlebotek Solutions Corporation (“Phlebotek”) to ease access to blood sample collection for patients. We believe these solutions may facilitate more frequent monitoring and benefit patients longer term as they enable a convenient and safe alternative to inpatient visits.

Leveraging Microsoft’s machine learning capabilities to create the TCR-Antigen Map, we are developing a diagnostic product, T-Detect, that may enable early or accurate detection of many diseases from a single blood test. Initially, we are validating detection of a set of discrete diseases for which there is a significant unmet medical need for better diagnostic testing and early intervention, and where antigen specificity is well-known. These include infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders and certain prevalent cancer types. In December 2020, we launched an early access program for T-Detect COVID as the first indication of T-Detect, which came a year earlier than originally planned. The formal launch of T-Detect COVID, which includes a virtual provider to authorize the prescription, occurred in February 2021. Leveraging the infrastructure built to support this initial indication, we are on track to launch T-Detect Lyme in our CLIA lab towards the end of 2021. Additionally, we have early clinical signals in gastrointestinal disorders such as Celiac disease and Crohn’s disease, and we have built a robust research and development pipeline to rapidly identify signals across many disease states simultaneously. Our immune medicine platform enables parallel development because it can work with retrospective sample sets and uses machine learning and computational statistics to continuously improve our detection and accuracy which is applied to all of the diagnostic algorithms.

For T-Detect, we launched the first indication, T-Detect COVID, to confirm past SARS-CoV-2 infection, which represents a stepping-stone to the long-term vision of T-Detect where a single blood sample can provide information about what diseases a person’s immune system has seen or is currently fighting. In two real-world studies with convalescent patients, including our own IRB-sponsored study called ImmuneRACE, our T-cell based test shows higher sensitivity than multiple antibody serology tests to confirm past infection. Additionally, data demonstrates that the T-cell response is more persistent than the antibody response to the virus, persisting to at least five months following initial infection and that the performance of T-Detect COVID is equivalent to or better than antibody testing at all timepoints evaluated. The test was launched in December 2020, primarily targeting groups and individuals for whom knowledge of past COVID-19 infection or exposure is valuable, including self-pay consumers, employers and concierge medicine physician groups. Our market research shows that there are many people who were unable to access testing in spring of 2020 or had unexpected results from antibody or PCR testing, and are still curious or skeptical about a previous infection. This is particularly true for individuals who were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, in whom antibody testing may be less reliable. Additionally, our research indicates high interest among consumers in understanding immunity to COVID-19. Therefore, we are offering the ability to contribute to on-market research to quantitatively assess the duration of immunity as defined by the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells.

T-Detect Lyme is the second indication planned for the T-Detect product line, with an anticipated market launch towards the end of 2021 as a CLIA-service offering, leveraging the infrastructure built for T-Detect COVID. An interim analysis of the ImmuneSense Lyme study comparing our T-cell based diagnostic to current standard of care testing will support the CLIA launch. We have enrolled 91% of the subjects needed for the interim analysis. We intend to continue full enrollment of the 990 subject study, of which approximately 420 will have either a clinical diagnosis or clinical suspicion based on a physician's assessment of Lyme disease. The remaining subjects will include negative controls from both endemic and non-endemic regions and potential cross-reactive diseases. There are approximately 3.4 million Lyme diagnostic tests performed annually. Initially, we are focused on generating data that supports market entry for early and more accurate diagnosis of Lyme disease for patients with non-descript symptoms that are suspected to be caused by Lyme. This population is over 600,000 patients in the US each year.

In terms of other T-Detect indications in the pipeline, we recently confirmed our third clinical signal in Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s is a gastrointestinal disorder that is often confused with other conditions with similar symptom presentation and there is a significant unmet need for a highly specific and sensitive non-invasive test.

Leveraging acceleration from our T-Detect COVID efforts, we are now able to assess an increasing number of diseases in parallel across the five stages of our research and development pipeline. We begin the process with diseases that meet key market attractiveness criteria such as high unmet medical need, understanding of the antigenic space, and our access to samples with metadata. We then seek early clinical signals in prioritized disease states and continue to refine our modeling for those that appear promising. For each signal, we generate data in several ways: run naïve blood to map receptors to antigens, collaborate on studies with control groups, and leverage a database of unlabeled samples. Once a signal is confirmed in additional independent cohorts and the product profile is deemed attractive, we proceed with a full commercial validation and generation of a locked-down algorithm to take into clinical validation and regulatory submission.

There are many economic advantages of T-Detect both in the research and development stage and as a commercial product. For the research and development pipeline, we leverage the same capital expenditures and workflow for signal generation across all diseases allowing us to study multiple diseases in parallel without requiring substantial workflow adjustments or significant new capital expenditures for specific new disease states. Once commercialized, again, we use the same blood sample and the same underlying chemistry for all diseases with a small incremental investment in software for each individual disease, enabling a long-term high margin profile.

Drug Discovery

Our drug discovery efforts to date are focused on identifying therapeutic-grade TCRs and antibody-secreting BCRs to enable our partners to engineer, manufacture and commercialize therapeutic candidates.

Our TruTCR process characterizes TCRs against shared antigens for use in the development of therapeutics. In December 2018, we entered into an exclusive collaboration with Genentech to leverage this capability for the development of cellular therapies in oncology. We are pursuing two product development pathways for novel T cell immunotherapies in which Genentech intends to use TCRs screened by our immune medicine platform to engineer and manufacture cellular medicines:

Our TruAB process, similar to our TruTCR process, leverages our high-throughput capabilities to screen millions of BCRs to identify unique antibodies from the blood of COVID-19 patients. In several months, we used blood from over 300 patients to identify hundreds of thousands of antibodies, of which we synthesized and characterized over 3,300 antibodies that bind to various parts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Our lead TruAB candidates that neutralize live virus at very low concentrations, which means that a very small amount of each of these antibodies is able to block the virus from infecting cells. Importantly, our drug discovery approach is differentiated from other groups because of the scale and throughput of our TruAB approach that allows us to identify a much broader set of naturally-occurring, fully human antibody candidates to select the best ones for clinical development. The first potential clinical application of our antibodies is to treat patients who are actively fighting or have recently recovered from COVID-19.

Our Clinical Portfolio and Pipeline

Our Competitive Strengths

We aim to harness the inherent biology of the adaptive immune system to develop clinical products and services that improve human health by leveraging our core competitive strengths.

Our Strategy

Our focus is to leverage our immune medicine platform and competitive strengths to develop transformative clinical solutions accessible to patients around the world.

A Primer: The Adaptive Immune System

Over millions of years, the adaptive immune system has evolved an elegant solution to keeping people healthy. It recognizes and responds to most antigens, whether they come from outside the body, such as a virus, or inside the body, such as mutations that drive cancer.

The innate and adaptive immune systems both play a role in human immunity, but only the adaptive immune system provides a specific response to signals of disease, or antigens. These disease specific antigens are primarily fragments of proteins that are recognized as foreign, such as proteins from a virus. However, antigens can be recognized as foreign even if they are not from a pathogen. In cancer cells, antigens are generated from neoantigens, which are derived from mutations specific only to the cancer, or tumor associated antigens (“TAAs”), which are from aberrantly expressed normal proteins. For autoimmune disorders, the immune system mistakenly recognizes normal protein fragments as foreign antigens and attacks otherwise healthy tissue.

The Adaptive Immune Response

The key cells of the adaptive immune system that enable our bodies to mount responses against antigens are called T cells and B cells. T cells can destroy target cells directly, and B cells secrete antibodies, activating other parts of the immune system to destroy targets.

Each T and B cell has a unique Y-shaped receptor, which can recognize one or a small number of the millions of antigens to which our bodies are continuously exposed. When an adaptive immune response is initiated against a particular disease, the T cells and B cells encoding the disease-specific targeting receptors rapidly multiply through clonal expansion, allowing for a powerful immune response. Some of these expanded cells directly attack the disease, and others form long-term memory to allow rapid recognition of the same antigens in the future and protect against reinfection. Unlike all other genes in the human genome, the genetic sequences of TCRs and BCRs rearrange over time through a complex biological process resulting in massive diversity. The diversity of these receptors is made possible by a unique reshuffling of their genetic code known as V(D)J recombination (V=Variable, D=Diversity, J=Joining). This recombination process only occurs in T cells and B cells, and it results in each cell clone having a unique receptor-associated deoxyribonucleic acid (“DNA”) sequence. This unique DNA sequence acts like a barcode that can be used to identify and track an individual receptor over time, as shown in the figure below:

The adaptive immune response requires millions of these unique receptors to be widely distributed and present in the blood at all times in order to have the ability to rapidly respond to many different diseases simultaneously. Even after a specific TCR binds to an antigen and clonally expands, the frequency of these expanded T-cell clones containing the TCR remains relatively low in relation to the estimated trillions of other T cells that are circulating. We have demonstrated this by sequencing thousands of healthy individuals for control cohorts for our research and development efforts. We now know that disease-specific TCRs that are clonally expanded in a patient’s blood are present, on average, at less than 1 cell out of 100,000 cells. Despite their relatively low abundance, disease-specific TCRs can mount a systemic, persistent response to most perturbations because of the highly specialized properties of the immune response summarized in the table below:

In order to fully leverage these inherent properties of the immune system to develop clinical products, this enormous diversity and scale must be taken into consideration to be able to reliably and repeatedly measure the relative frequency of each disease-specific T cell in the blood. For example, cancer-specific TCRs circulating in the blood of a cancer patient are only present at 1 out of 100,000 cells. Auto-reactive T cells specific to any given autoimmune disorder circulating in the blood are only present at 1 out of 1,000,000 cells. Accordingly, the ability to detect disease-specific T cells requires a technology that can quantitatively probe a minimum of hundreds of thousands to millions of blood cells from each sample.

Our Immune Medicine Platform

We built a platform that can reveal and translate these properties of the adaptive immune system with the scale, precision and speed required to enable the development of Personalized Products, including disease monitoring, clinical diagnostic tests for early detection and immune-based therapeutics. Our immune medicine platform combines a suite of proprietary chemistry, computational biology and machine learning to generate clinical immunomics data to decode the adaptive immune system and transform the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

The massive amount of data generated by our immune medicine platform is stored in our dynamic clinical immunomics database of over 58 billion immune receptors. We believe the application of machine learning with Microsoft has the potential to exponentially accelerate the growth of novel insights from this database, which we expect will further inform our product development efforts, as demonstrated by the growing number of clinical signals we are generating.

Sequence with immunoSEQ

immunoSEQ sequences single chains of Y-shaped TCRs and BCRs using NGS. NGS generally describes several modern sequencing technologies that enable more efficient DNA and ribonucleic acid (“RNA”) sequencing than prior technologies. The key innovation in the development of immunoSEQ, pioneered by Dr. Harlan Robins and a team of leading immunologists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (“Fred Hutch”), was a novel approach utilizing PCR, hybridization and sequencing of rearranged TCRs to determine the sequences in millions of rearranged TCR genes, as shown in the figure below. We apply a similar approach for BCR sequencing. All of the data generated by immunoSEQ is uploaded to our clinical immunomics database and accessed through our proprietary cloud-based visualization and analytic tool called the immunoSEQ Analyzer.

One of the biggest challenges of any multiplex PCR technique is controlling for PCR amplification bias, which is critical for accuracy. We solved for this problem by creating a synthetic immune repertoire that mimics rearranged immune receptor loci for all V and J genes. By identifying specific primers that are either under or over amplified, titrating the primer concentrations and computationally adjusting residual bias, we optimize quantitation. The accuracy and reproducibility of our bias control methodology was demonstrated in our lab and independently in a multi-center, lab-to-lab concordance study using our immunoSEQ RUO kit. The ability to generate an unbiased TCR or BCR sequencing read-out is paramount for any clinical product and will be required for the utility and reliability of clinical kits.

immunoSEQ enables us to observe the majority of receptors involved in a real human immune response, providing deep insights into a complex biological system that was previously challenging to understand.

Map with MIRA

Our proprietary MIRA technology enables the identification of TCRs specific to thousands of antigens simultaneously. The MIRA technology leverages a multiplexed, combinatorial approach to mapping TCRs to antigens in four steps:

3. Sort T cells by marker of interest.

Combined with immunoSEQ, MIRA elucidates what diseases a patient’s immune system has been exposed to or is actively fighting at a scale that is one thousand times more sensitive than standard immunological techniques such as ELISPOT, or enzyme-linked immunospot.

Pair with pairSEQ

Our proprietary pairSEQ technology builds on immunosequencing by using a combinatorial strategy to accurately pair the two chains of Y-shaped immune cell receptors at higher throughput than can be achieved with single cell sequencing. Pairing is difficult because the two chains of the Y-shaped receptor are located on different chromosomes, which get separated when DNA is extracted from a cell for sequencing. By pairing TCRs or BCRs, we rapidly detect thousands of complete chain sequences to develop new TCR-mediated cellular therapies or to develop differentiated antibodies.

Characterize with TruTCR

TruTCR characterizes binding, cytotoxicity and safety properties of antigen-specific, paired TCRs to identify a select subset that are therapeutic-grade, enabling the development of optimal clinical candidates to be engineered into TCR-mediated cellular therapies. Our comprehensive TCR characterization process utilizes advanced cellular immunology to measure TCRs against a variety of metrics to determine the optimal clinical candidates. Antigen-specific, paired TCRs undergo evaluation for avidity, cytokine release, cytotoxicity and safety. Those TCRs that pass the first safety filter are then evaluated for TCR reactivity against T cell lines and primary cells. To date, we have identified and characterized to different stages more than 4,000 unique antigen-specific TCRs against 600 different clinically relevant targets, constituting our pipeline of possible clinical candidates. TCR characterization using TruTCR is summarized in the figure below:

In collaboration with Genentech, we plan to apply a similar process to screen, identify and characterize in real-time what we believe are the most promising patient-specific TCRs targeting the patient’s specific cancer antigens, advancing the next generation of cellular therapy in oncology.

Discover with TruAB

TruAB enables the discovery and characterization of BCRs for use as therapeutic antibodies. Our key differentiator is the ability to tap into the massive diversity of the B-cell repertoire to identify naturally-occurring, fully human antibodies at unprecedented scale.

In April 2020, we deployed our platform to identify neutralizing antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. We processed blood from more than 300 recovered and symptomatic COVID-19 patients. We then applied our high-throughput BCR pairing technology and paired more than 490,000 antibody heavy and light chains. We evaluated these BCR sequences in silico and selected more than 3,300 likely attractive antibody candidates for downstream functional characterization, including affinity binding and live virus neutralization.

As of November 12, 2020, Amgen, Inc. declined its option to negotiate an agreement to develop, manufacture and commercialize our neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.We are evaluating several options to further advance our lead candidate(s).

Beyond COVID-19, we believe these efforts represent a differentiated platform extension that will position us to pursue additional potential antibody discovery opportunities in a variety of disease states, including in autoimmunity where there is an unmet need.

Clinical Immunomics Database

We are developing a large, dynamic clinical immunomics database, which currently contains over 58 billion immune receptors. We use our proprietary software and core competency in computational biology to structure and store immune receptor data and to create tools for rapid analysis and easy visualization. All immunosequencing data is processed and uploaded to a secure cloud-based database.

The record of diseases a person has encountered, both past and present, is recorded in their TCR repertoire. This comprehensive disease information is contained in the immunosequencing data that we generate from each sample, which we believe will be revealed over time by our TCR-Antigen Map. We plan to map, both directly and through machine learning, an estimated 1015 TCRs to thousands of clinically relevant antigens, which we believe will allow us to annotate this immunosequencing data with information about disease states, increasing the value of the data over time.

We leverage our database to fuel our pipeline of immune medicine products. With over 58 billion immune receptors, our platform enables us to work with retrospective samples which serve as training sets to which our Microsoft collaborators apply machine learning and computational statistics to improve the accuracy of certain of our clinical products and services.

Our Products and Services

Our current portfolio includes commercial products and services in life sciences research and clinical diagnostics, and we are developing products and services in both clinical diagnostics and drug discovery. Our commercial research product, immunoSEQ, primarily serves as our underlying research and development engine to develop and validate our clinical pipeline. Our first commercial diagnostic product, clonoSEQ, is our FDA-cleared test to monitor MRD in patients with select blood cancers. In the fourth quarter of 2020, we initiated the launch of our second commercial diagnostic product, T-Detect COVID, for the confirmation of past COVID-19 infection. Our commercial research and clinical products leverage the sequencing and mapping capabilities of our immune medicine platform and the revenue generated by these products largely contributes to sequencing revenues. Our pipeline of clinical diagnostics for the early and accurate detection of many diseases will be commercialized under the expanding T-Detect product line and will continue to grow our sequencing revenues over time. Our drug discovery efforts to date are focused on identifying therapeutic-grade TCRs (TruTCR) and antibody-secreting BCRs (TruAB) to enable our partners to engineer, manufacture and commercialize therapeutic candidates. With Genentech, we are advancing our pipeline of both shared and private TCR-mediated cellular therapies for cancer patients. We also extended our platform to identify highly potent neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and this differentiated approach can be leveraged across other disease states. Our drug discovery pipeline leverages the sequencing, mapping, pairing and characterization components of our platform and generates most of our development revenue. We plan to continue to invest in our platform to develop additional clinical applications, which we prioritize based on rigorous data requirements for clinically actionability, unmet medical need and commercial viability.

Life Sciences Research

immunoSEQ for Research Use Only

Our immunoSEQ technology, which we offer to customers as a service and a kit, is the core of our immune medicine platform. immunoSEQ utilizes multiplex, bias-controlled PCR to accurately and quantitatively sequence millions of immune receptors at high-throughput directly from DNA. We believe immunoSEQ is positioned to become the global standard for immunosequencing due to the quality and reliability of our data and the analytics and data visualization tools that are easily accessible to customers in the immunoSEQ Analyzer, whether sequenced as a service or a kit.

Since inception, immunoSEQ has been used for research purposes by over 2,400 academic researchers and 175 biopharmaceutical companies and incorporated into over 650 clinical trials to answer translational research questions relating to the adaptive immune system, monitor response to therapies and discover new prognostic and diagnostic signals. These research questions are answered by using the data generated by immunoSEQ and uploaded to the immunoSEQ Analyzer to study different properties and dynamics of all of the sequences in an immune repertoire, such as frequency or abundance, and by tracking specific sequences over time in clinical trials. Graphical representations of the Analyzer output are shown in the figure below:

immunoSEQ provides a growing revenue stream. However, we also use immunoSEQ as the foundational technology for our clinical diagnostic and therapeutic products. To fuel innovation, we also provide immunoSEQ to select research and development collaborators who gain access to immunoSEQ and significant computational and analytical support, co-share and co-publish the data with us, and contribute to the validation of potential clinical diagnostic discoveries. For example, we work closely with our collaborators to conduct translational research to explore the use of immunosequencing to predict responders to novel immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors.

Our immunoSEQ Analyzer is housed on a secure cloud-based database and is the visualization gateway to our clinical immunomics database that currently has billions of TCR and BCR sequences which are often annotated and accompanied by samples with associated metadata. We offer computational services to assist our customers in realizing the power of their data and to compare their data to other publicly available datasets in our clinical immunomics database. We contribute some of our own research and development sequences into the publicly available datasets and customers are offered the option to make their data public using one of our tools on our immunoSEQ Analyzer, called immuneACCESS, through which researchers can expedite and streamline the peer-review process by sharing their data with reviewers prior to manuscript submission. The ongoing analysis of immune receptor data from an expanding database tagged with clinical metadata, when possible, has led to over 550peer-reviewed publications referencing immunoSEQ and potential clinical signals to explore.

We recently launched an improved version of immunoSEQ to our research customers. We incorporated chemistry improvements into a new RUO kit, which was completed in the fourth quarter of 2019 and launched in 2020. We expect this service and kit offering to become the technology upon which we clinically validate the early detection diagnostics we are developing using our TCR-Antigen Map. The kit improvements will further enhance the quantitation of the data and allow for any sample type to be used, including stored cancer tumor tissue sections, which is more readily available globally amongst researchers in the field of cancer immunotherapy. The RUO kit has been selected by 35 academic core labs and user groups in the United States and we continue to expand these collaborations. Additionally, we announced distribution agreements with two CROs, Q2 Solutions and Labcorp, and we are in discussions with several others. By enabling academic core labs and CROs as centers of excellence with our gold standard immunoSEQ RUO kit, we expect to set the foundation for long term growth going forward.

immunoSEQ T-MAP

In 2020, we identified some key opportunities to expand our research product offering to include mapping data generating by our platform. Sequences mapped to clinically relevant antigens has many benefits beyond just repertoire sequencing dynamics and we plan to offer immunoSEQ T-MAP across many disease states in the future.

We launched our first immunoSEQ T-MAP product extension in August 2020 for COVID-19 vaccine developers and researchers to accurately and reproducibly measure the T-cell immune response to vaccines and track the persistence of that response over time. Our immunoSEQ T-MAP product offers significant advantages over other technologies to detect and monitor T cells at scale using a small amount of blood without the need for live cells that require special sample handling.

To date, we have sequenced a subset of patient samples (pre- and post-vaccination) from clinical trials sponsored by several top-tier vaccine developers, including AZ, University of Oxford, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and several prestigious academic labs who are studying the impact of COVID-19 vaccines on patients receiving other immune-mediated therapies. Using our immunoSEQ T-MAP COVID product, we can identify and track expanded T cells induced by a vaccine, which can be distinguished from a natural infection, in order to monitor vaccine efficacy. In vaccinated subjects who test positive for the virus utilizing the two-step multiplex PCR amplification process, immunoSEQ T-MAP COVID can specifically track vaccine-induced T cells and correlate response with improved patient outcomes. In addition, we are also in late-stage discussions with several companies developing next-generation vaccines.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, we entered into our first multi-year immunoSEQ T-MAP cancer collaboration with AZ to generate data from antigen-specific T-cell immune responses across AZ’s oncology drug portfolio. T-MAP data may inform early disease intervention to help improve patient outcomes, with the potential for additional opportunities to develop companion diagnostics or novel therapeutics with AZ. The partnership also allows for data sharing between us and AZ that benefits our independent efforts. We expect this will help expedite our ability to map the large antigenic space in cancer.

Clinical Diagnostics

We aim to be a global leader in immune-driven diagnostics for early detection, prognosis and monitoring of disease. To achieve this long-term goal, we are focused on leveraging the sequencing and mapping functions of our immune medicine platform to develop diagnostic tests that meet regulatory standards, are widely reimbursed and are accessible to patients all around the world.

Monitoring MRD with clonoSEQ

Our first diagnostic product, clonoSEQ, is an FDA-authorized NGS test for the detection and monitoring of MRD in bone marrow or blood samples in patients with select lymphoid malignancies in which the malignant cell is derived from a T cell or a B cell. MRD refers to the presence and number of these malignant T or B cells that may remain in a patient’s body during and following treatment. Because our technology quantifies the frequency of every T cell or B cell in a sample, we can monitor MRD accurately at a sensitivity of 1 out of 1,000,000 cells, given sufficient sample input. By taking a baseline measurement prior to starting therapy and then tracking the number of cells at several time points following therapy initiation, hematologists can improve their ability to assess treatment response, predict long-term patient outcomes, monitor disease burden over time and detect potential relapse. clonoSEQ is FDA-authorized for patients with MM and ALL from bone marrow samples and for patients with CLL from bone marrow and blood samples. clonoSEQ is also currently available as an LDT for use across lymphoid malignancies and sample types, including those which have not been authorized by the FDA.

NCCN Guidelines recommend using a validated test to measure MRD to define the burden of disease and assess response to therapy in MM and ALL after each treatment stage. NGS MRD testing has been added to these guidelines and we plan to seek expansion of the recommendations to include additional time points in each disease state and to incorporate clonoSEQ specific data. To that end, in 2020, NCCN published favorable updates to their myeloma guidelines and pediatric ALL guidelines to include more specifics related to how and when to measure MRD, the importance of using a sensitive and validated test, and a reference to the necessity of collecting a baseline sample at diagnosis.

MRD monitoring is becoming increasingly important in the hematologic oncology field because highly effective new therapies are extending survival. This has created a need for more sensitive tools to monitor the disease status of patients over longer periods of time and has introduced the potential for MRD to be included as a surrogate or primary endpoint in registrational clinical trials. We believe we are uniquely positioned to benefit from these industry dynamics with both our clinical and biopharmaceutical customers.

In the clinic, clonoSEQ testing has been ordered by clinicians at centers all around the country, including all 30 NCCN centers, for over 15,000 unique patients. We believe increased adoption of clonoSEQ will now be possible due to the extensive coverage policies granted in 2019 and 2020 by Medicare to assess MRD at multiple time points throughout therapy in MM, ALL and CLL, and several national private payors and large regional payors, together representing over 225 million total covered lives in ALL and MM and over 110 million covered lives in CLL. We are in active discussions with other large private national and regional payors. To further develop the mounting real world evidence demonstrating the actionability of MRD monitoring, we launched a clinical registry in 2020. This prospective, multicenter, observational study will include approximately 500 adult patients with lymphoid malignancies in the United States.

Among biopharmaceutical companies, we believe clonoSEQ will remain the preferred commercial test for MRD monitoring in their registrational trials. To that end, clonoSEQ is now being used by more than 40 biopharmaceutical companies in over 190 clinical trials. To continue demonstrating clinical utility across disease settings and lines of therapy, clonoSEQ is also being used in 79 ongoing prospective investigator-led clinical trials, and our MRD data have been included in over 92 peer-reviewed publications.

We believe clonoSEQ has broad applicability across all lymphoid malignancies. Specifically, we recently submitted a 510(k) premarket notification for ALL from blood samples in February 2021 and are actively validating the test for patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (“NHL”) disease types. Importantly, we have also implemented collaborations with Labcorp and Phlebotek to ease access to blood sample collection for patients. We believe these solutions may facilitate more frequent monitoring and benefit patients longer term as they enable a convenient and safe alternative to inpatient visits.

We continue to deepen our commercial investments to expand clinical adoption of clonoSEQ and have increased the size of our specialized sales and customer support organization and supporting infrastructure. We have also added a new team of demand generation representatives who are hematology specialists and are working closely with our key account managers in accounts that are onboarded. We are also building another team focused on Integrated Delivery Networks. Outside of the United States, we have successfully transferred the technology to seven labs across France, Germany, Italy, UK, Spain, Australia and Japan which provide local testing options, primarily in support of collaborative group and investigator-sponsored studies.

The Technology

clonoSEQ is our FDA-authorized, NGS MRD technology that is designed to sequence all rearranged receptor sequences in a tumor in parallel to ensure accurate, sensitive and robust MRD monitoring.

A summary of the steps for FDA-authorized usage is as follows:

1. gDNA is extracted from bone marrow.

7. Following completion of these data processing steps, a report is issued.

Adaptive Assist: Patient support program

Adaptive Assist is our patient support program to facilitate access to clonoSEQ testing services for patients who could benefit from the clinical insights provided by NGS MRD testing. Patients can call to discuss their individual circumstances with one of our dedicated patient support representatives in order to better understand their coverage prior to clonoSEQ testing and to navigate the insurance process, including appeals for denied claims. We also offer financial assistance for qualified uninsured and under-insured patients who cannot afford their patient financial responsibility for clonoSEQ.

Clinical Validation in FDA Filing for MM, ALL and CLL

Our clonoSEQ test has been shown to help better predict patient outcomes and add insight to the evaluation of disease response to therapy because we have clinically validated clonoSEQ’s ability to detect MRD at a sensitivity greater than the current clinical standard for all lymphoid malignancies. clonoSEQ has demonstrated sensitivity of 1 out of 1,000,000 cells (10-6), given sufficient sample input, which is a deeper resolution than the current accepted standard of 1 out of 100,000 cells (10-5), 1 out of 10,000 cells (10-4) or 1 out of 10,000 cells (10-4) for MM,ALL and CLL, respectively. Based on these results, as further illustrated below, we believe clinical standards for MRD sensitivity may be increased to 10-6 to better predict patient outcomes.

Clinical validation in MM was demonstrated in two studies. The first study, a 720 patient, randomized phase III trial conducted at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI 10-106), evaluated the ability to predict progression-free survival (“PFS”) and disease-free survival in patients who achieved complete response (“CR”) and the ability to predict PFS in all evaluable patients. This study demonstrates that MRD negativity for patients in CR significantly predicts PFS.

The second study, a 706 patient, randomized phase III trial sponsored by Janssen Biotech, Inc. (“ALCYONE”), evaluated Darzalex in patients with newly diagnosed MM who were transplant ineligible and served as the basis of the approval of Darzalex in combination with Bortezomib, Melphalan and Prednisone (“VMP”) in this patient population. This study provides evidence that our clonoSEQ diagnostic test is predictive of PFS, regardless of treatment received. Patients who were MRD negative at less than or equal to 10-5 had longer PFS and the group with persistent MRD negativity had the longest PFS overall.

Patients who were MRD negative by the clonoSEQ Assay had longer PFS

compared to MRD positive patients regardless of treatment.

Clinical validation in ALL was demonstrated in two Children’s Oncology Group studies, AALL0232 (high risk) and AALL0331 (standard risk) by evaluating the ability of clonoSEQ to predict event-free survival (“EFS”) at a primary cutoff of 10-4 and across a continuous MRD measure. Results demonstrate that patients with the lowest levels of MRD have better outcomes than patients with higher disease burden regardless of risk stratification.

Patients with lower levels of MRD (less than 1/100,000 cells), using the increased

sensitivity of clonoSEQ, have a higher probability of EFS.

Clinical validation in CLL was demonstrated in two studies. The first, a 337 patient randomized phase III registrational study in previously untreated CLL patients sponsored by Roche (CLL14), evaluated the ability of clonoSEQ to predict PFS at a primary cutoff of 10-5 and across continuousMRD measures from blood. The study demonstrates that MRD negative patients had significantly better PFS, independent of treatment regimen.

The second was a prospective, phase 2 clinical trial in previously untreated CLL patients in which MRD was assessed from both blood and bone marrow. MRD negativity at multiple cutoffs (10-4, 10-5, and 10-6) was significantly associated with better PFS. MRD was also prognostic of PFS when disease burden was assessed as a continuous measure (no MRD threshold). This study demonstrates that MRD is predictive of better PFS and can be assessed from either bone marrow or blood.

CLL Patients with lower levels of MRD in blood have a higher probability of EFS

Strategy to Achieve Market Leadership

We aim to drive adoption and achieve market leadership for MRD monitoring with clonoSEQ for all lymphoid malignancies. To do so, we are executing upon the following strategic initiatives:

Early or Accurate Detection with T-Detect

By learning to read the antigen specificity of a patient’s immune system, we are developing the T-Detect test for early or accurate detection across a broad range of diseases, including infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, and certain prevalent cancer types. We believe the adaptive immune system presents an ideal model for diagnostic tools for early or accurate detection of disease. In many cases, treatment is typically most effective early in the course of a disease, when there is a minimal amount of disease-specific antigen present. TCRs recognize this very small amount of antigen before it is detectable by conventional methods and then they expand exponentially. Given this large response in proportion to the amount of antigen present, we believe we will be able to see this signal of disease much sooner than is possible with other methods of early disease detection. Additionally, in some disease states, knowledge of prior infection from certain pathogens, e.g., COVID-19 and Lyme, may inform the basis of clinical decision-making or ongoing patient care. Finally, the ability to rapidly and accurately identify the cause of non-descript symptoms may increase efficiency and compress the timeline between symptom and diagnosis, thus reducing the diagnostic odyssey that patients often endure in the current diagnostic paradigm.

We are leveraging our existing immunoSEQ technology to develop T-Detect for the early or accurate detection of many diseases simultaneously. This is possible because our platform works with retrospective sample sets and uses machine learning and computational statistics to continuously improve accuracy without requiring large cohorts of prospective patients. We began by developing T-Detect for the early detection of specific disease states that meet the following criteria:

• Clinically relevant antigens are known and understood.

• High unmet medical need for diagnosis.

• Potential to improve patient outcomes with early intervention.

• Availability of sample sets with patient outcomes.

Using these data, we aim to simulate the natural diagnostic capability of the immune system into the clinic where we will use the map for the early or accurate detection of many diseases. The potential economic model for T-Detect of becoming "one test with many results" is very compelling. When multiple tests are ordered at the same time, the marginal cost for each additional test result is negligible.

Through iterative data generation efforts, we continue to improve the accuracy of the TCR signatures of each disease by running blood samples from healthy donors, collaborating on retrospective studies with control groups in select disease states, and leveraging our database for additional sequences to include in the TCR signatures.

We see the evolution of T-Detect in three phases over time:

Proof of Concept

For proof of concept of the ability of our technology to detect infectious disease exposure in patients, our researchers profiled the T cell repertoire of more than 660 subjects with known cytomegalovirus (“CMV”) status and identified a set of TCRs across that population that are specific for CMV. This set of CMV-specific TCRs was then tested as a method for CMV diagnosis in a new cohort of 120 people. Using this TCR set, we were able to confirm CMV infection in up to 93% of blood samples evaluated. These data represent a significant step forward for the potential use of TCR sequences to detect exposure to pathogens or other diseases with distinct T cell profiles.

By combining the power of our clinical immunomics database with a machine learning technique known as pseudo-labeling, we are rapidly scaling the identification and validation of antigen-specific TCRs for diagnostic applications. For example, we have already iteratively scaled the identification of additional CMV-specific TCRs to improve the diagnostic accuracy in our proof of concept study to 98% with a minimal false positive rate. We believe this approach has the potential to significantly reduce the time and number of individuals, and ultimately the cost, required to accurately validate our clinical diagnostics across different diseases.

First Commercial Indication: T-Detect COVID

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we and Microsoft committed to decode the population-wide T cell immune response to COVID-19. We believe that quantifying virus-specific T cells may provide important diagnostic advantages because T cells appear earlier than antibodies and persist longer.

Timing and Persistence of T-cell Response1,2,3,4,5,6,7

1. Gallais et al., Peng et al., Snyder et al., Subbarao et al., Channappanavar et al., and Zuo et al.

2. Zuo J, Dowell A, Pearce H, Verma K, Long HM, Begum J, et al. Robust SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell immunity is maintained at 6 months following primary infection. bioRxiv. 2020 Nov 2;2020.11.01.362319.

3. Gallais F, Velay A, Wendling M-J, Nazon C, Partisani M, Sibilia J, et al. Intrafamilial exposure to SARS-CoV-2 induces cellular immune response without seroconversion. medRxiv. 2020 Jun 22;2020.06.21.20132449.

4. Peng Y, Mentzer AJ, Liu G, Yao X, Yin Z, Dong D, et al. Broad and strong memory CD4+ and CD8+ T cells induced by SARS-CoV-2 in UK convalescent individuals following COVID-19. Nat Immunol. 2020;21(11):1336–45.

5. Snyder TM, Gittelman RM, Klinger M, May DH, Osborne EJ, Taniguchi R, et al. Magnitude and dynamics of the T-cell response to SARS-CoV-2 infection at both individual and population levels. MedRxiv. 2020 Aug 4. 2020.07.31.20165647.

6. Subbarao K, Mahanty S. Respiratory virus infections: Understanding COVID-19. Immunity. 2020;52(6):905–9.

7. Channappanavar R, Zhao J, Perlman S. T cell-mediated immune response to respiratory coronaviruses. Immunol Res. 2014;59(1–3):118–28.

Together, we implemented the immuneCODE Program to quantitatively assess the T-cell immune response to the virus in over 5,000 individuals from around the world and we have made this data publicly available. To date, we have mapped hundreds of thousands of TCRs to all of the immunogenic parts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, inclusive of but not limited to the spike protein.

T-Detect COVID confirms past SARS-CoV-2 infection, which represents a stepping-stone to the long-term vision of T-Detect where a blood sample can provide information about what diseases a person’s immune system has seen or is currently fighting. In two real-world studies with convalescent patients, including our own IRB-sponsored study called ImmuneRACE, our T-cell based test demonstrated higher sensitivity than multiple antibody serology tests to confirm past infection. Additionally, data demonstrates that the T-cell response is more persistent than the antibody response to the virus, persisting to at least five months following initial infection, and performance of T-Detect COVID is equivalent to or better than antibody testing at all timepoints evaluated.

T-Detect COVID was launched in December 2020, primarily targeting groups and individuals for whom knowledge of past COVID-19 infection or exposure is valuable, including self-pay consumers, employers and concierge medicine physician groups. Our market research shows that there are many people who were unable to access testing in spring of 2020 or had unexpected results from antibody or PCR testing, and are still curious or skeptical about a previous infection. This is particularly true for individuals who were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, in whom antibody testing may be less reliable. Additionally, our research indicates high interest among consumers in understanding immunity to COVID-19. Therefore, we are offering the ability to contribute to on-market research to quantitatively assess the duration of immunity as defined by the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells.

The commercial and operational infrastructure needed to deliver T-Detect COVID will be critical as we move T-Detect forward in additional indications. These efforts will set the base of our near-term commercial focus in infectious diseases including COVID-19 and Lyme disease and a medium-term expansion into autoimmune disorders.

Clinical Validation in FDA EUA filing for Detection of Recent or Past SARS-CoV-2 Infection

Our T-Detect COVID test is a novel T-cell based assay that has demonstrated high percent positive and percent negative agreement (PPA and NPA) to identify or exclude prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases and lack of cross-reactivity to several viral and/or respiratory pathogens.

PPA was demonstrated in two studies 1) a primary PPA study evaluating residual blood samples (N=205) from subjects diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection based on the EUA Abbott RealTime SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test from a single US reference lab (Discovery Life Sciences, New York); and 2) a secondary PPA study using both retrospectively and prospectively collected samples from multiple cohorts (N=77; ImmuneRACE and ImmuneSenseTM COVID-19) and identified as positive based on a variety of EUA testing methods performed by a number of different labs. T-Detect COVID demonstrated high PPA particularly in the timeframe of ≥15 days since diagnosis (97.1%) as well as ≥15 days since symptom onset (94.5%) (Table 1).

Table 1. Positive Percent Agreement (PPA) of T-Detect COVID Assay with SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR according to days since symptom onset or days since diagnosis.

All (range 0-91 days) 205 N/A N/A

Days Since Symptom Onset

All (range 0-106 days) 77 N/A N/A

NPA was demonstrated in two studies: 1) a primary NPA including 124 retrospective frozen clinical remnant blood samples collected prior to December 2019 and thus presumed negative for SARS-CoV-2 infection; and 2) a secondary NPA study using blood samples from subjects enrolled prospectively (ImmuneSense COVID-19) from Oct-Nov 2020 who presented with SARS-CoV-2 symptoms but tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 using RT-PCR EUA, BioFire RP V2.1, and EUA antibody tests.

T-Detect COVID demonstrated NPA of approximately 100% in individuals who had compatible symptoms of infection but were either presumed or confirmed negative for SARS-CoV-2 by PCR and antibody testing (Table 2).

Table 2. Negative Percent Agreement (NPA) of T-Detect COVID Assay with pre-pandemic samples sourced retrospectively (DLS) and prospectively enrolled subjects (ImmuneSense COVID-19) negative for SARS-CoV-2 by EUA RT-PCR and antibody testing.

Cohort Samples (N) T-Detect Negative Results (N) NPA (95% CI)

Second Indication in Late-Stage Development: T-Detect Lyme

In the third quarter of 2019, we established proof of concept in acute Lyme disease from two independent, retrospective cohorts of over 200 patients. In both of these studies, we compared to standard of care, two-tiered serology testing. Results demonstrate a doubling of sensitivity of our test compared to standard two-tiered serology in acute patients. We have also seen that our test can confirm an ongoing infection in patients who were treated with standard 2-3 weeks of doxycylcine but still have lingering symptoms. The signal in Lyme further demonstrates that machine learning can be leveraged to develop diagnostic signals, even without the large cohorts of prospective patient data often required for diagnostics development.

For T-Detect Lyme, we launched the ImmuneSENSE Lyme study with the goal to enroll 990 participants. Even though Lyme visits and diagnoses were down in 2020 due to COVID-19, by the end of 2020, we enrolled 91% of the subjects needed for the interim analysis. We intend to continue full enrollment of the 990 subject study, of which approximately 420 will have either a clinical diagnosis or clinical suspicion based on a physician's assessment of Lyme disease. The remaining subjects will include negative controls from both endemic and non-endemic regions and potential cross-reactive diseases. We expect to launch as a CLIA-service offering at the end of 2021, leveraging the infrastructure built for T-Detect COVID.

T-Detect Pipeline

To achieve our goal of developing a diagnostic test for early detection across a broad range of diseases, we are pursuing the following strategic plan:

• Launch one TCR sequencing technology, T-Detect, for initial indications.

Over the past year, we have optimized our five-stage research and development funnel and expanded our lab capacity to expedite our ability to move many diseases through the funnel in parallel. We start by prioritizing diseases that meet key market attractiveness criteria such as high unmet medical need, understanding of the antigenic space, and our access to samples with metadata. Once an early signal is identified, we refine our modeling with additional case control studies and by leveraging our clinical immunomics dataset. Once we confirm a signal, we proceed with a full commercial validation and generation of a locked-down algorithm to take into clinical validation and regulatory submission. We have about four to five diseases under study in each of the earlier stages of the research and development funnel and continue to invest heavily in the speed and robustness of this funnel with people and data analytic capabilities.

T-Detect Research and Development Funnel

In the third quarter of 2020, we announced the confirmation of our third clinical signal in Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s is a gastrointestinal disorder that is often confused with other conditions with similar symptom presentation and there is a significant unmet need for a highly specific and sensitive non-invasive test. Data will be shared in a scientific forum next year. Other indications such as celiac, ovarian cancer and other autoimmune disorders continue under development within our research and development funnel and we will update you on future progress as they advance.

There are many economic advantages of T-Detect both in the research and development stage and as a commercial product. For the research and development pipeline, we use the same capex and workflow for signal generation across all diseases allowing us to study multiple disease in parallel. Once commercialized, again, we use the same blood sample and the same underlying chemistry for all diseases with a small incremental investment in software for each individual disease, enabling a long-term high margin profile.

Drug Discovery

Our aim is to develop immune-mediated therapies in oncology and other disease areas by using the full functionality of our immune medicine platform, including TruTCR and TruAB for TCR and antibody characterization, respectively. We are currently working to leverage our immune receptor discovery capabilities to enable commercialization of novel therapies by collaborators. In the future, we may explore expanding our own end-to-end capabilities for the further development of our own portfolio of therapeutic candidates.

TCR Discovery for Cellular Therapy using TruTCR

We have developed a high-throughput TCR screening process that allows for the discovery of antigen-specific TCRs that occur in low frequencies in healthy individuals. We believe this provides a set of naturally-occurring TCRs with a more favorable safety profile in comparison to engineered TCRs. We then further characterize these naturally-occurring TCRs for binding avidity and cytotoxic potency. To date, we have identified and characterized to different stages more than 4,000 unique antigen-specific, paired TCRs against 600 different clinically relevant targets, constituting our pipeline of possible clinical candidates. We complete a data package for each characterized TCR that we believe meets the thresholds for therapeutic evaluation. These thresholds are divided into a series of seven key steps covering antigen specificity, functional avidity, cytolysis and safety assessment. A package is considered complete when the TCR meets the rigorous criteria for all seven steps and the data are compiled to support an IND package. As a proof of concept, we compared our fully characterized TCR against WT-1, a TAA often overexpressed in various cancers, to a benchmark WT-1 TCR. A gold standard for testing TCR efficacy is killing of cells that naturally express the target antigen at low levels. Using a cancer cell line that is known to express low levels of WT-1, our candidate WT-1 TCR was over four times more effective at killing cancer cells than the benchmark TCR. The complete data package for our lead WT-1 TCR candidate demonstrates improved avidity, cytolysis and a promising safety profile.

Our high-throughput screening technologies enable us to discover TCRs against any type of antigen which opens up the potential to develop novel TCR-mediated cellular therapies for any type of cancer. As compared to cellular therapies that target T cell surface antigens that are not specific to cancer, we believe our approach to TCR cellular therapies may mitigate the risk of off-target side effects. Therefore, we believe our approach may be applicable to the vast majority of solid tumors, even those where the tissue of origin is vital to survival such as lung or renal.

In December 2018, Genentech selected our platform to develop, manufacture and commercialize novel neoantigen directed T cell therapies for the treatment of a broad range of cancers. Our ultimate goal is to harness the vast majority of therapeutically relevant, patient-specific TCRs against neoantigens and advance the next generation of cellular therapies in oncology. We believe our TCR discovery capabilities may also facilitate the development of cellular therapies in disease areas beyond cancer, which we can commercialize outside of the Genentech collaboration.

In addition to cellular therapy applications, we believe our TCR screening capabilities can guide the design and development of next generation vaccines by characterizing the immunogenicity of hundreds of antigens at a time. Our platform can also be used to then monitor early signs of antigen-specific immune response in patients treated with novel vaccines.

Strategic Collaboration with Genentech

Through our worldwide collaboration and license agreement with Genentech, we plan to develop, manufacture and commercialize novel neoantigen directed T cell therapies for the treatment of a broad range of cancers to advance the next generation of cellular therapies in oncology. We are pursuing two product development pathways for novel T cell immunotherapies in which Genentech intends to use TCRs screened by our immune medicine platform to engineer and manufacture cellular medicines:

Under the terms of the agreement, we received a $300.0 million initial upfront payment in February 2019, and we may be eligible to receive approximately $1.8 billion in aggregate milestone payments upon achievement of specified development, regulatory and commercial milestones. Additionally, we may receive royalties on sales of products commercialized under that agreement. Genentech will be responsible for clinical, regulatory and commercialization efforts. We will be responsible for the screening and identification of TCRs that can most effectively recognize and directly target specific cancer antigens, including neoantigens.

In parallel, we plan to evaluate an investment in additional facilities that would allow us to scale our end-to-end screening of patient-specific TCRs for potential future late-stage clinical trials and commercialization of the Personalized Product. We believe this investment would position us to potentially pursue additional opportunities outside of this collaboration, including developing and commercializing vaccines and cellular therapies in other disease states.

Developing neutralizing antibodies using TruAB

Our TruAB process, similar to our TruTCR process, leverages our high-throughput capabilities to screen millions of BCRs to identify unique antibodies from human blood. Our first proof of concept is for patients who are actively fighting or have recently recovered from COVID-19. In just several months, we collected blood from over 300 patients and hundreds of thousands of antibodies, of which we synthesized and characterized over 3,300 antibodies to various parts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. To date, we identified several candidates that neutralize live virus at very low concentrations, which means that a very small amount of each of these antibodies is able to block the virus from infecting cells. Using our TruAB antibody discovery approach, we identified several lead antibody candidates that strongly bind to different parts of the virus. Our growing portfolio of novel antibodies includes candidates that don’t bind the classic RBD region and instead bind to S1, Trimer or S2. We believe we are one of the only groups that has identified S2-specific antibodies that neutralize the virus. This could have important advantages in a cocktail strategy that targets different mechanisms of action to inhibit the virus and potentially virus variants.

Importantly, our drug discovery approach is differentiated from other groups because of the scale and throughput of our TruAB approach that allows us to identify a much broader set of naturally-occurring, fully human antibody candidates to select the best ones for clinical development. Beyond COVID-19, we are exploring applications of TruAB discovery in other diseases, including autoimmunity.

Our People and Culture

Our employees, internally referred to as “Adapters,” are passionate about immune medicine, empowered by scientific discipline and fueled by our foresight and curiosity about the adaptive immune system.

As of December 31, 2020, we had 622 full-time employees of which 124 hold medical or doctoral degrees. None of our employees are subject to a collective bargaining agreement and we have not experienced any work stoppages. We believe relations with our employees are good.

Our talented employees drive our mission and share core values that both stem from and define our culture, which plays an invaluable role in our execution at all levels in our organization. Our core values are used in candidate screening and in employee evaluations to help reinforce their importance in our organization:

• Debate openly. Value discussions inspired by different points of view.

• Follow True North. Show up with integrity and do the right thing.

• Have fun. Fun makes everything better.

We believe our employees are highly engaged, and we were recognized consecutively in 2018, 2019 and 2020 by the Puget Sound Business Journal as one of Washington State’s Best Places to Work.

Diversity and Inclusion

We pride ourselves on inclusive team building, product design and gender diversity at all levels of management. We are committed to creating and maintaining a culture of belonging. In 2020, we expanded and implemented several diversity and inclusion initiatives. We launched multiple employee resource groups, including Women@Adaptive, Adaptive PRIDE, Black Adapter Network and Working Life and Wellness. We developed diversity sourcing programs and implemented hiring manager diversity training. We also established an Equity Advisory Council of senior leaders focused on specific objectives looking at clinical studies, commercial engagement, recruiting, and retention through a diversity and inclusion lens. We integrated hidden bias training into our Leader of People Program. Most recently, we launched a STEM minority mentoring program with a local university.

Compensation and Benefits

We strive to provide compensation and benefits that are competitive to market and create incentives to attract and retain employees. Our compensation package includes market-competitive base pay, performance-based short-term incentives, health care, retirement benefits, paid time off and family leave. In addition, we offer employees the benefit of equity ownership in the Company through stock option and restricted stock unit awards. We also provide access to a variety of health and wellness resources.

Employee Development & Training

We prioritize employee development and training and have established programs to support a culture of employee development. Specifically, in 2020, we offered multiple learning solutions, including our Leader Orientation Program, our Leader of People Program, and our L-re:combinator Program. Our Leader Orientation Program is an eight-week blended learning program that features self-paced online learning and live virtual training, designed to train new line to mid-level leaders about our culture, HR policies, communication, motivation, and more. Our Leader of People Program is a three-part, 15-week program designed to train leaders on change management, interviewing and hiring the best, having difficult discussions and creating alignment. Our L-re:combinator Program is a peer-to-peer learning group that provides mid-level managers with education, support, and collaboration opportunities.

In 2020, over 100 Adapters attended leadership development programs and consumed over 2,000 hours of training.

COVID-19 Preparedness

In response to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, management formed a cross-functional COVID-19 preparedness committee to regularly monitor the progress of the disease, stay apprised of expert external guidance, discuss and implement preparedness plans as needed and provide clear communication to all Adapters. We implemented measures to reduce the risk of exposure of COVID-19 to the employees who continue to work on site, including the implementation of work-from-home policies for certain employees, as well as the implementation of shifts and zones to physically distance employees who remain on site and extra sanitation measures. For those employees working remotely, we provided additional equipment to support their ergonomic and technology needs.

Strategic Collaborations and Other Agreements

Genentech Agreement

In December 2018, we entered into the Genentech Agreement to develop, manufacture and commercialize novel neoantigen directed T cell therapies for the treatment of a broad range of cancers. Pursuant to the Genentech Agreement, we are responsible for the screening and identification of TCRs that can most effectively recognize and directly target specific neoantigens, while Genentech is responsible for clinical, regulatory and commercialization efforts. During the term of the Genentech Agreement, we have agreed to certain defined exclusivity obligations or restrictions with respect to the development and commercialization of certain cell therapies.

In February 2019, we received a $300.0 million upfront payment from Genentech. We also may be eligible to receive approximately $1.8 billion over time, including payments of up to $75.0 million upon the achievement of specified regulatory milestones, up to $300.0 million upon the achievement of specified development milestones, and up to $1.4 billion upon the achievement of specified commercial milestones. Genentech will also pay us tiered royalties at a rate ranging from the mid-single digits to the mid-teens on aggregate worldwide net sales of the Shared Products and the Personalized Product arising from the strategic collaboration, subject to certain reductions, with aggregate minimum floors. For the year ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, the Genentech Agreement accounted for approximately 53.7% and approximately 41.3% of our revenue, respectively.

The Genentech Agreement will continue until the expiration of all royalty payments, but may be terminated by mutual agreement, upon an uncured material breach by either party, upon insolvency of either party, or by Genentech for convenience upon prior written notice.

Microsoft Agreement

In December 2017, we entered into a strategic collaboration agreement with Microsoft (“Microsoft Agreement”) to map TCR sequences to the antigens they bind with the goal of developing diagnostic tests for early detection of many diseases from a single blood test.

Pursuant to the Microsoft Agreement, Microsoft applies machine learning and computational statistics to our clinical immunomics data in order to produce predictive models that allow us to map TCR sequences to the antigens they bind. Under the Microsoft Agreement, we retain all rights to these predictive models and the data underlying our TCR-Antigen Map, including the right to commercialize clinical products using our TCR-Antigen Map. We and Microsoft have granted each other certain licenses to one another’s intellectual property rights and have agreed to certain defined exclusivity obligations with respect to collaborations and projects that are substantially similar to the Microsoft Agreement.

During the term of the Microsoft Agreement, we have agreed to exclusively use Microsoft’s Azure cloud services at standard volume pricing with a minimum Azure consumption requirement. We have also agreed to host each diagnostic product developed as a direct result of the Microsoft Agreement on Azure throughout the term of the Microsoft Agreement and for a period of five years thereafter. In addition, we have agreed to exclusively use Microsoft’s immunomics artificial intelligence services for TCR-antigen mapping in connection with all of our technology, products and services developed as a direct result of our collaboration with Microsoft throughout the term of the Microsoft Agreement.

The Microsoft Agreement has a seven-year term and may be terminated by mutual agreement or by either party upon an uncured material breach. Concurrently with entry into the Microsoft Agreement, Microsoft purchased shares of our Series F-1 convertible preferred stock which were converted into common stock upon the closing of our initial public offering in July 2019.

Processing and Manufacturing

We process both clinical and research use samples in our laboratory in Seattle, Washington. Our Seattle laboratory is CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited and ISO 13485-certified. After we intake samples sent to us from healthcare providers or research and biopharmaceutical customers, we extract DNA from the sample if required, amplify it and otherwise prepare it for our sequencing and data analysis. Throughout our processes, we apply a rigorous quality management system, which is designed to comply with the Quality System Regulation (“QSR”) and the requirements of CLIA, CAP and other applicable state licensing and accreditation requirements.

In order to process samples submitted to us using immunoSEQ or clonoSEQ, we utilize a combination of proprietary primer mixes and commercial materials, including a multiplex PCR master mix, enzymes, high throughput multi-cycle sequencing reagents and other materials, which we obtain and assemble as needed from various third-party vendors on customary terms. A number of our processing steps utilize automated equipment to help ensure consistency and efficiency. Sequencing is performed using the Illumina NextSeq System, which we have appropriately qualified for the intended uses of our products and services. We also work with a third-party vendor to manufacture our immunoSEQ RUO kit using our proprietary primer mix and other materials. We also use Illumina to develop IVD kits and provide related support for clonoSEQ and T-Detect, pursuant to a September 2019 development and supply agreement with a six-year term and payments to Illumina based on Illumina achieving milestones and revenue share payments ranging from a low to mid-single digit percentage of future net sales, subject to customary reductions.

For our TCR-Antigen Map and drug discovery initiatives, we conduct our current operations at our laboratories in Seattle, Washington and South San Francisco, California. These laboratories have cell sorting, tissue culture and other processing equipment.

We use a limited number of suppliers, or in some cases single suppliers, for our laboratory equipment and materials. We manage this concentration risk by targeting or building to levels of surplus stock that, we believe, would allow us to locate alternative suppliers if needed. However, if one of our suppliers fails to perform adequately or fulfill our needs, we may be required to incur significant costs and devote significant efforts to find new suppliers and may face delays in processing samples or developing and commercializing our products and services. Beginning in 2020, we have faced delays in the form of longer lead times for equipment that is subject to increased demand due to public health measures taken to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, such as freezers. In particular, we have purchased the Illumina NextSeq System, and Illumina also supplies us with reagents that have been designed for use solely with this sequencer. While we acquire these reagents from Illumina on customary terms, if we had to replace the reagents we use we may also need to acquire and qualify a replacement sequencer, validate the reagents and potentially revalidate aspects of our existing assays.

Distribution

We processed our first immunoSEQ samples in 2011 and issued our first clonoSEQ report in 2013. Since then, we have focused on expanding our customer base. We sell our products and services primarily through our own internal sales force. Our sales and marketing efforts are targeted at department heads, laboratory directors, principal investigators, core facility directors, clinicians, payors and research scientists and pathologists at leading academic institutions, biopharmaceutical companies, research institutions and contract research organizations. We seek to increase awareness of our products and services among our target customers through direct sales calls, trade shows, seminars, academic conferences, web presence and other forms of internet marketing. Our drug discovery efforts are focused on large biopharmaceutical companies.

We have entered into relationships with distributors to leverage an improved RUO immunoSEQ kit that can be used with various sample types, which we expect to enable global distribution of our research product. We plan to utilize a third-party global distributor but may not be able to engage a distributor in a timely manner or on commercially reasonable terms.

Intellectual Property

We have an extensive global portfolio of intellectual property rights to protect our immune medicine platform, the products and services that draw on it and our reputation in the industry.

As of December 31, 2020, we owned or controlled 451 active patents and patent applications whose claims are intended to cover what we do, what we plan to do and what others might do to compete with us. From our earliest patent filings in 2009, our portfolio has been tailored to reflect our efforts to harness the adaptive immune system for research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Our patent claims extend to not only adaptive immune receptor molecules, but also to uniquely powerful techniques for sequencing immune cell receptors, determining clonality and immune competency, diagnosing disease, predicting responses to immunotherapy and identifying new drug candidates. Our patent protection generally expires in years ranging from 2029 to 2040.

Critical know-how we develop is protected by a trade secrecy program to ensure against inappropriate disclosure or use. Encompassed in our know-how is our proprietary database of coding sequences, antigen reactivities and safety profiles for immune receptors, which is vast and growing. Even with collaborators, access to our immune medicine platform technology is limited and tightly controlled through contracts and careful communication. We own our immune medicine platform, including improvements we or collaborators make to it, and retain rights in data resulting from its use.

We also pursue trademark registration for our product and service names and promotional slogans in our existing and projected markets.

Intellectual Property Portfolio by the Numbers

As of December 31, 2020, our intellectual property portfolio consisted of the following:

• 65 pending patent applications;

• 386 issued patents across our immune medicine platform;

• 1 patent family directed to therapeutic antibodies;

• 1 patent family directed to gene sequencing technology; and

• 28 trademarks registered and pending registration worldwide.

Patent Portfolio

We have developed an expansive patent portfolio in commercially important markets with claims to critical aspects of our technology, beginning with our first patent applications exclusively licensed from Fred Hutch in 2009. Our ongoing patent strategy is to generate a return on our patenting investments, which values substantive quality over volume to build a defensible moat around technology we use as well as what others might develop to design around our position.

We prioritize pursuing patent claims with a reasonable likelihood of being granted. Where patentability for a particular invention is questionable, we often choose to protect it as a trade secret instead. In some instances, however, we may seek to push the patentability envelope when the state of the applicable patent laws are in flux, such as patent eligibility for naturally occurring molecules, including TCRs, in the United States.

Methods of Measuring Adaptive Immunity

In 2009, a U.S. provisional patent application was filed to pursue protection for immunosequencing by our co-founder, Dr. Harlan Robins. The invention broadly relates to methods for assessing the adaptive immune system status of individuals. Rearranged V and J segment genes of TCRs or BCRs are targeted as biomarkers for assessing the status of the immune system at one or more points in time. Granted claims extend to the use of particular sets of amplification primers, while pending claims are being pursued to capture additional assessment techniques. Licensed exclusively to us by Fred Hutch, the application has since spawned more than 31 additional patent applications, many of which have been granted as of December 31, 2020, including U.S. Patent No. 9,809,813.

Optimizing Nucleic Acid Amplification Reactions

Amplification of nucleic acids can result in over- or under-representation of the amplified molecules, misrepresenting the number present in the source material, such as a blood sample. Dr. Robins invented a method to correct for such bias, thereby improving the precision of PCR-based quantification of TCR and BCR coding sequences in a sample. The claimed approach utilizes synthetic templates, reflecting nucleic acid sequences for rearranged V and J receptor segments in the sampled cells. More than twenty-eight related patent applications have since been filed, many of which have been granted as of December 31, 2020, including U.S. Patent Nos. 9,371,558 and 10,214,770.

Diagnosing and Monitoring Disease

In connection with our acquisition (“Sequenta Acquisition”) of Sequenta, Inc (“Sequenta”) in 2015, we purchased Sequenta’s extensive patent portfolio. The portfolio includes 124 patent applications which disclose and claim methods to identify and quantify T cell-based immune responses to antigen exposure using NGS. TCR and BCR DNA, RNA or cell-free DNA from samples, including blood and bone marrow, are used to detect, prognose and monitor disease, including autoimmune disease, infection and cancer. More than one hundred twelve patents have been granted in the portfolio as of December 31, 2020, including U.S. Patent Nos. 8,628,927 and 8,236,503.

Our diagnostic methods also apply to the detection of MRD (the target of our B cell-based clonoSEQ diagnostic test for assessing how disease burden changes in response to treatment or during remission) and T-Detect (our T cell-based diagnostic tests). Multiple patents have been granted from additional applications relating to diagnostic methods and diagnostically significant TCRs filed by us, including U.S. Patent No. 9,824,179.

TCR-Antigen Map

In connection with our Microsoft collaboration, we are developing a diagnostic product to detect cancer and other diseases at their earliest stage by learning the signals and responses of the activated immune receptors in a patient’s blood. Pre-collaboration, we filed 10 related patent applications for methods to produce antigen-exposed enriched T cell populations and identify their antigen specificities by comparison to a pre-exposure population of cells or by use of an algorithm. We have filed additional patent applications relating to algorithmic-based methods to characterize antigen specificities and will continue to do so as our work proceeds with Microsoft.

MIRA

We developed and are pursuing patent protection for bioinformatic-based methods to determine the antigen specificity of TCRs by exposing T cells to a panel of multiple antigens. Antigen exposure can be performed by incubation or presentation; for example, it can be performed via recombinant expression in another cell. These methods may also be used to pair the two TCR chains as well as to identify high avidity TCRs. Several patents have been granted as of December 31, 2020, including U.S. Patent No. 10,066,265.

pairSEQ

In nature, TCRs and BCRs exist as a heterodimer of paired chains, each of which is encoded on a different chromosome. Immunosequencing reveals the nucleotide structure of each individual chain, but not which chains match as cognate pairs. We developed and are pursuing patent protection for multiple bioinformatic-based approaches to pairing the two chains of TCRs and BCRs, including one deployed in our pairSEQ technique. Our methods also allow for identification of receptor chain pairs which are specific to particular antigen targets. Over fifty related patent applications have been filed, nearly half of which have matured into granted patents as of December 31, 2020, including U.S. Patent No. 10,077,478.

Assessing Responsiveness to Immunotherapy

Leveraging our immunosequencing technologies, we developed methods for predicting responses to immunotherapy, vaccines and infection. To those ends, rearranged TCR or BCR sequences are quantified and their levels or frequencies compared at different points in time. More than 20 related patent applications have been filed, most of which have been granted as of December 31, 2020, including U.S. Patent No. 10,221,461.

Therapeutic Antibodies

We developed a therapeutic antibody discovery process called TruAB from which neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 have been produced. A patent application to these antibodies was filed in 2020 and is pending.

In-Licensed and Acquired Intellectual Property Rights

While we have developed the majority of our immune medicine platform, products and services, we occasionally license or acquire third-party owned inventions to bolster the strength of our patent estate and ensure freedom to operate.

Early work by Dr. Robins with Fred Hutch led to discoveries around immunosequencing methods and tools covered by 128 patents and patent applications in the United States and abroad which we exclusively licensed. Our rights are for all fields of use worldwide and are sublicensable. To the extent any licensed granted patent rights extend to products or services sold by us, we pay Fred Hutch a royalty rate of 0.75% of net sales on licensed products.

Through our Sequenta Acquisition, we also obtained an exclusive paid-up license, with rights to sublicense, to patents filed in the United States, Europe, Australia and China owned by iRepertoire, Inc. The license is for worldwide use in diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and monitoring of any proliferative disorder for which rearranged nucleic acids capable of encoding an immune receptor, whether productive or unproductive, or functional or nonfunctional, of a cell, excluding tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, of the proliferative disorder can be used as markers for the disorder, including, but not limited to, lymphoid and myeloid proliferative disorders, such as ALL, CLL, acute myeloid leukemia, chronic myelogenous leukemia, Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, plasma cell neoplasms, such as MM, monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance, monoclonal B cell lymphocytosis and myelodysplastic syndromes.

In addition to the patent estate acquired from Sequenta, we also acquired ownership of immunosequencing-related patent portfolios from Imdaptive, Inc. and ImmunID S.A.S.

Trademarks

We own various trademarks, applications and unregistered trademarks in the United States and other commercially important markets, including our company name, product and service names and other trade or service marks. Our trademark portfolio is designed to protect the brands for our products and services, both current and in the pipeline.

Trade Secrecy Program

We have a trade secrecy program to prevent disclosure of our trade secrets to others, except under stringent conditions of confidentiality when disclosure is critical to our business. Our trade secrets include the composition of certain reagents, assay protocols and immunosequencing-related data, such as immune receptor sequences. We protect trade secrets and know-how by establishing confidentiality agreements and invention assignment agreements with our employees, consultants, scientific advisors, contractors and collaborators. These agreements provide that all confidential information developed or made known during the course of an individual or entities’ relationship with us must be kept confidential during and after the relationship. These agreements also provide that all inventions resulting from work performed for us or relating to our business and conceived or completed during the period of employment or assignment, as applicable, shall be our exclusive property. In addition, we take other appropriate precautions, such as physical and technological security measures, to guard against misappropriation of our proprietary information by third parties.

Although we take steps to protect our proprietary information and trade secrets, including through contractual means with our employees and consultants, third parties may independently develop substantially equivalent proprietary information and techniques or otherwise gain access to our trade secrets or disclose our technology. Accordingly, we may not be able to meaningfully protect our trade secrets. For more information regarding the risks related to our intellectual property, see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property.”

Competition

The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, including the fields of life sciences research, clinical diagnostics and drug discovery, are characterized by rapidly advancing technologies, intense competition and a strong emphasis on intellectual property. Given the breadth and promise of immune medicine, we face substantial competition from many different sources, including life sciences tools, diagnostics, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic research institutions and governmental agencies and public and private research institutions across various components of our platform and product and service offerings. Due to the significant interest and growth in immune medicine more broadly, we expect the intensity of the competition to increase. However, we believe our scale, precision and speed, and the resulting clinical applicability, distinguish us from our competitors. In life sciences research, immunoSEQ faces competition from a number of companies.

In clinical diagnostics, clonoSEQ faces competition primarily from institutions performing flow cytometry in-house, particularly outside of the United States. We may also face competition from companies developing early cancer detection testing products for indications that do not currently compete with clonoSEQ.

In drug discovery, clinical trials in the field of immune medicine are being pursued by a number of industry and academic players.

Immune medicine is being pursued by several biotechnology companies as well as by large-cap biopharmaceutical companies. Many of our current or potential competitors, either alone or with their collaboration partners, have significantly greater financial resources and expertise in research and development, manufacturing, regulatory approval and compliance, and sales and distribution than we do. Mergers and acquisitions involving life sciences research, clinical diagnostics or drug discovery companies in the immune medicine space may result in even more resources being concentrated among a smaller number of our competitors. Smaller or early-stage companies may also prove to be significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with large and established companies. These competitors also compete with us in recruiting and retaining qualified scientific and management personnel and in acquiring technologies complementary to, or necessary for, our programs.

Our commercial opportunity could be reduced or eliminated if our competitors develop and commercialize research or diagnostic products or services that are more accurate, more convenient to use or more cost-effective than our products or services. Competitor therapeutic products could also prove safer, more effective, more convenient to administer or more cost-effective than any therapeutic products we may develop with our collaborators. Our competitors also may obtain FDA or other regulatory approval for their products more rapidly than we may obtain approval for ours, which could result in our competitors establishing a strong market position before we are able to enter the relevant market.

Government Regulation

Life Sciences Research Use Only Technologies

Our core research product, immunoSEQ, is a RUO tool in the United States that provides data to third parties such as biopharmaceutical companies that are themselves engaged in the research and development of potential diagnostic and therapeutic products and services for which they may later pursue investigation and clearance, authorization or approval from regulatory authorities, such as the FDA.

RUO products belong to a separate regulatory classification under a long-standing FDA regulation. From an FDA perspective, products that are intended for research use only and are labeled as RUO are not regulated by the FDA as in vitro diagnostic devices and are therefore not subject to the regulatory requirements discussed below for clinical diagnostic products. Thus, RUO products may be used or distributed for research use without first obtaining FDA clearance, authorization or approval. The products must bear the statement: “For Research Use Only. Not for Use in Diagnostic Procedures.” RUO products cannot make any claims related to safety, effectiveness or diagnostic utility, and they cannot be intended for human clinical diagnostic use. Accordingly, a product labeled RUO but intended or promoted for clinical diagnostic use may be viewed by the FDA as adulterated and misbranded under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (“FDCA”) and subject to FDA enforcement action. The FDA will consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding distribution and use of an RUO product, including how the product is marketed and to whom, when determining its intended use. If the FDA disagrees with a company’s RUO status for its product, the company may be subject to FDA enforcement activities, including, without limitation, requiring the company to seek clearance, authorization or approval for the products.

Clinical Diagnostics in the United States

Our first diagnostic product, clonoSEQ, was granted marketing authorization by the FDA for the detection and monitoring of MRD in bone marrow samples in patients with MM and ALL under the de novo process, which classified clonoSEQ and future DNA-based tests to measure MRD in hematological malignancies as Class II devices, as explained further below. In August 2020, we received our third FDA clearance for clonoSEQ, following a 510(k) submission, for CLL in bone marrow as well as blood samples.

In the United States, medical devices are subject to extensive regulation by the FDA under the FDCA and its implementing regulations, and other federal and state statutes and regulations. The FDA regulates the design, development, preclinical, analytical and clinical testing, manufacture, safety, effectiveness, clearance, authorization or approval, record-keeping, packaging, labeling, storage, adverse event reporting, advertising, promotion, marketing, sales, distribution and import and export of medical devices. IVDs are a type of medical device and include reagents and instruments used in the diagnosis or detection of diseases, conditions or infections, including, without limitation, the presence of certain chemicals, genetic information or other biomarkers. Predictive, prognostic and screening tests can also be IVDs.

After a medical device is placed on the market, numerous regulatory requirements apply. These include:

Failure to comply with applicable regulatory requirements can result in enforcement action by the FDA, which may include sanctions, including but not limited to, warning letters; fines, injunctions, and civil penalties; recall or seizure of the device; operating restrictions, partial suspension or total shutdown of production; refusal to grant 510(k) clearance or premarket approvals (“PMAs”) of new devices; withdrawal of clearance or approval; and civil or criminal prosecution.

Position in the European Union

In the EU, IVDs can be placed on the market by obtaining a “CE mark,” which demonstrates conformity with the In vitro Diagnostic Medical Device Directive (“IVDD”). The requirements under the Directive include:

On May 26, 2017, the EU released a new regulatory framework, the In vitro Diagnostic Medical Device Regulation (“IVDR”), which will replace the IVDD. Our products in the EU will have to comply with the IVDR requirements after May 26, 2022, subject to the applicable transitional provisions before full compliance is required. The IVDR is considerably stricter in regulatory oversight than the IVDD and will require more IVD devices to be reviewed by a notified body before being placed on the market. Until that time, our products must continue to meet the requirements of IVDD for commercialization in the EU.

U.S. Federal and State Regulation of Laboratories

Given that aspects of our business at certain facilities involve acting as a clinical laboratory, we are required to hold certain federal and state licenses, certifications and permits to conduct our business.

As to federal certifications, CLIA establishes rigorous quality standards for all laboratories that perform testing on specimens derived from humans for the purpose of providing information for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of disease, or the impairment of, or assessment of health. As a clinical laboratory, we must obtain a CLIA certificate based on the complexity of testing performed at the laboratory, such as a Certificate of Compliance for high-complexity testing. CLIA also mandates compliance with various operational, personnel, facilities administration, quality and proficiency requirements, intended to ensure that their clinical laboratory testing services are accurate, reliable and timely. CLIA compliance and certification is also a prerequisite to be eligible to bill for services provided to government payors and for many private payors. Furthermore, we are subject to survey and inspection every two years to assess compliance with program standards, and may be subject to additional unannounced inspections. Laboratories performing high-complexity testing are required to meet more stringent requirements than laboratories performing less complex tests.

In addition to CLIA requirements, we elect to participate in the accreditation program of the CAP. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”), the agency that oversees CLIA, has deemed CAP standards to be equally or more stringent than CLIA regulations and has approved CAP as a recognized accrediting organization. Inspection by CAP is performed in lieu of CMS inspections for accredited laboratories. Therefore, because we are accredited by the CAP Laboratory Accreditation Program, we are deemed to also comply with CLIA.

CLIA provides that a state may adopt laboratory regulations that are more stringent than those under federal law, and a number of states have implemented their own more stringent laboratory regulatory requirements. Select states, including Washington, have laboratory regulations that have been deemed by the federal government to be at least as stringent as CLIA, and thus laboratories licensed under those state regimes are exempt from CLIA and the state Department of Health is permitted to issue a CLIA number, along with a state Medical Test Site license, rather than a certificate being issued by CMS. Our laboratory holds the required Washington license. State laws may require that laboratory personnel meet certain qualifications, specify certain quality control procedures, facility requirements or prescribe record maintenance requirements.

Several states additionally require the licensure of out-of-state laboratories that accept specimens from those states. For example, New York requires a laboratory to hold a permit which is issued after an on-site inspection and approval of each LDT offered by a laboratory, and has various, more stringent requirements than CLIA and CAP, including those for personnel qualifications, proficiency testing, physical facility and equipment and quality control standards. Our laboratory holds the required licenses for Maryland, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York and California.

From time to time, other states may require out-of-state laboratories to obtain licensure in order to accept specimens from the state. If we identify any other state with such requirements, or if we are contacted by any other state advising us of such requirements, we intend to follow instructions from the state regulators as to how we should comply with such requirements.

If a clinical laboratory is found to be out of compliance with CLIA certification, CAP accreditation or a state license or permit, the applicable regulatory agency may, among other things, suspend, restrict or revoke the certification, accreditation, license or permit to operate the clinical laboratory, assess civil monetary penalties and impose specific corrective action plans, among other sanctions.

Laboratory Developed Tests in the United States

The FDA has historically exercised enforcement discretion to not regulate most LDTs. As such, LDTs have not been subject to FDA’s marketing clearance and approval processes, or post-marketing controls, for medical devices. LDTs are generally considered to be tests that are designed, developed, validated and used within a single laboratory. Laboratories certified as “high complexity” under CLIA may develop, manufacture, validate and run LDTs. clonoSEQ is available as an LDT for use in assessing MRD for other lymphoid malignancies, including CLL and NHL, at our Seattle, Washington laboratory.

In that respect, Congress introduced legislation to establish a framework for FDA to oversee marketing of in vitro clinical tests (“IVCTs”), such as test kits and LDTs (the Verifying Accurate Leading-edge IVCT Development Act, or “VALID Act”). Under the VALID Act, FDA would oversee IVCTs, requiring pre-market review for high-risk IVCTs which expose patients to serious or irreversible harm and novel IVCTs. As currently drafted, existing LDTs at the time of VALID Act passage would be grandfathered as approved. For new low risk IVCTs, developers would submit a representative IVCT to FDA for review and issuance of a technology certification for the specific IVCT reviewed and later developed test within the scope of the certification. It is not certain whether or in what form the VALID Act bill will pass Congress, but passage could increase the stringency of regulatory review required for our LDT products.

If the VALID Act does not pass, FDA may decide to exercise enforcement discretion for LDTs, especially if it perceives a LDT as posing a risk to patients. Therefore, the regulatory path for marketing of LDTs is subject to uncertainty given the FDA’s latitude in interpreting and applying its laws and policies.

As of November 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services instructed the FDA to review voluntary EUA submissions of LDTs for COVID-19 in order to extend certain statutory immunities to liability for those laboratories under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (“PREP Act”). Failure to obtain an EUA for a COVID-19 LDT can impair such immunity and could make payor reimbursement for COVID-19 LDTs under the Family First Coronavirus Act unavailable. We are seeking an EUA for our T-Detect COVID test and could be at risk of product liability or lack of payor reimbursement if the EUA is not granted.

Federal and State Privacy, Security and Breach Notification Laws

Many state and federal laws govern the processing of personally identifiable information or individually identifiable health information. At the federal level, under the administrative simplification provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (“HITECH”), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued regulations that establish standards for protecting the privacy and security of “protected health information” used or disclosed by certain healthcare providers and other “covered entities” and their “business associates.” Three principal data protection-related regulations with which we are required to comply have been issued in final form under HIPAA and HITECH: privacy regulations, security regulations and security breach notification regulations.

The privacy regulations govern the use and disclosure of “protected” health information by covered healthcare providers, as well as health insurance plans. They also set forth certain rights that an individual has with respect to his or her protected health information maintained by a covered health care provider, including the right to access or amend certain records containing protected health information or to request restrictions on the use or disclosure of protected health information. The security regulations establish requirements for safeguarding the confidentiality, integrity and availability of protected health information that is electronically transmitted or electronically stored. HITECH, among other things, established certain health information security breach notification requirements. A covered entity must notify HHS and each affected individual of a breach of unsecured protected health information as well as the media if the breach involves more than 500 individuals.

HIPAA violations are subject to civil and criminal penalties. Additionally, to the extent that we submit electronic healthcare claims and payment transactions that do not comply with the electronic data transmission standards established under HIPAA and HITECH, payments to us may be delayed or denied.

Section 5(a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTCA”) has also been used to regulate data privacy and security at the federal level. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), failing to take appropriate steps to keep consumers’ personal information secure or using or disclosing personal information in violation of a company’s privacy notice may constitute unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce in violation of the FTCA. The FTC expects a company’s data security measures to be reasonable and appropriate in light of the sensitivity and volume of consumer information it holds, the size and complexity of its business and the cost of available tools to improve security and reduce vulnerabilities. Although we have and maintain a system for compliance with privacy laws and regulations, failure to comply with them could expose us to potential FTC enforcement action and fines.

In addition, certain state laws govern the privacy and security of health information, some of which are more stringent than HIPAA (including providing for patient enforcement of these state laws) and many of which differ from each other in significant ways and may not have the same effect, thus complicating compliance efforts. In addition, there are state breach notification laws in every state. Failure to comply with these laws, where applicable, can result in the imposition of significant civil or criminal penalties and private litigation.

General Data Protection Regulation in the EU

The General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) is a legal framework that sets requirements for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Economic Area (“EEA”). The GDPR sets out the principles for data management and the rights of the individual, while also imposing very significant fines that can be revenue-based. It applies to U.S. companies that process personal information of persons in the EEA in connection with the offer of products or services to those persons, or the monitoring of such persons’ behavior. It may also apply when a U.S. company processes personal information in the context of the activities of an entity established in the EEA. The GDPR became enforceable on May 25, 2018. The regulation applies to the human resources record of employees and even the Internet Protocol addresses of people using online services. The GDPR builds upon data rights that the EU had previously advocated, such as the right of an individual to be forgotten and the right to data portability.

Federal, State and Foreign Fraud and Abuse Laws

In the United States, there are various fraud and abuse laws with which we must comply and we are subject to regulation by various federal, state and local authorities, including CMS, other divisions of HHS, such as the Office of Inspector General (“OIG”), the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and individual U.S. Attorney offices within the DOJ, and state and local governments. We also may be subject to foreign fraud and abuse laws.

In the United States, the Anti-Kickback Statute (“AKS”) prohibits, among other things, knowingly and willfully offering, paying, soliciting or receiving remuneration to induce or in return for patient referrals for, or purchasing, leasing, ordering or arranging for the purchase, lease or order of, any healthcare item or service reimbursable under a governmental payor program. Courts have stated that a financial arrangement may violate the AKS if any one purpose of the arrangement is to encourage patient referrals or other federal healthcare program business, regardless of whether there are other legitimate purposes for the arrangement. The definition of “remuneration” has been broadly interpreted to include anything of value, including gifts, discounts, meals, travel, credit arrangements, payments of cash, consulting fees, waivers of co-payments, ownership interests and providing anything at less than its fair market value. Recognizing that the AKS is broad and may technically prohibit many innocuous or beneficial arrangements within the healthcare industry, the OIG issued a series of regulatory “safe harbors.” These safe harbor regulations set forth certain provisions, which, if met, will assure healthcare providers and other parties that they will not be prosecuted under the AKS. The failure of a transaction or arrangement to fit within a specific safe harbor does not necessarily mean that the transaction or arrangement is illegal or that prosecution under the AKS will be pursued. In those instances, arrangements will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether enforcement will be pursued. Penalties for AKS violations are severe and can include imprisonment, criminal fines, civil monetary penalties and exclusion from participation in federal healthcare programs. The regulations establishing safe harbor protection are subject to change and could affect future operations. Many states also have anti-kickback statutes, some of which may apply to items or services reimbursed by any third-party payor, including commercial insurers as well as patient self-pay. A violation of the AKS may be grounds for the government or a whistleblower to assert that a claim for payment of items or services resulting from such violation constitutes a false or fraudulent claim for purposes of the federal civil False Claims Act.

The civil monetary penalties statute is another potential statute under which a clinical laboratory may be subject to enforcement. Among other things, the civil monetary penalties statute imposes fines against any person who is determined to have presented, or caused to be presented, claims to a federal healthcare program that the person knows, or should know, is for an item or service that was not provided as claimed or is false or fraudulent. The civil monetary penalties statute also prohibits a person from offering or providing remuneration to any Medicare or Medicaid beneficiary that is likely to influence the individual to order or receive its items or services from a particular provider or supplier.

The exclusion statute requires the exclusion of entities and individuals who have been convicted of federal-program related crimes or healthcare felony fraud or controlled substance charges. The statute also permits the exclusion of those that have been convicted of any form of fraud, the AKS, for obstructing an investigation or audit, certain controlled substance offenses, those whose healthcare license has been revoked or suspended and those who have filed claims for excessive charges or unnecessary services. If we were to be excluded, our products and services would be ineligible for reimbursement from any federal programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and no other entity participating in those programs would be permitted to enter into contracts with us. In order to preserve access to beneficial healthcare items and services, the government may elect to exclude officers and key employees of manufacturers, rather than excluding the organization. Such enforcement actions would prohibit us from engaging those individuals, which could adversely affect operations and result in significant reputational harm.

Congress has also enacted statutes that impose criminal liability for healthcare fraud and abuse. The Health Care Fraud Statute prohibits knowingly and willfully executing, or attempting to execute, a scheme to defraud any healthcare benefit program, including private payors. A violation of this statute is a felony and may result in fines, imprisonment or exclusion from governmental payor programs such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The false statements statute prohibits knowingly and willfully falsifying, concealing or covering up a material fact or making any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement in connection with the delivery of or payment for healthcare benefit programs, items or services-public or private. A violation of this statute is a felony and may result in fines, imprisonment or exclusion from governmental payor programs.

The False Claims Act imposes liability on any person or entity that, among other things, knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim for payment by a federal governmental payor program. The qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act allow a private individual to bring actions on behalf of the federal government alleging that the defendant has defrauded the federal government by submitting a false claim to the federal government and permit such individuals to share in any amounts paid by the entity to the government in fines or settlement. Qui tam complaints are filed under seal, and the cases may progress for a number of years before a complaint is unsealed and a healthcare provider or supplier becomes aware of its existence. When an entity is determined to have violated the False Claims Act, it may be required to pay up to three times the actual damages sustained by the government, plus civil penalties ranging from $11,463 to $22,927 for each false claim. The False Claims Act is the federal government’s primary civil tool in healthcare fraud cases. False Claims Act liability is not limited to direct providers of health items or services. The government has asserted liability under the False Claims Act against manufacturers and other third parties who caused another party to file a false claim.

In addition, various states have enacted false claim laws analogous to the federal False Claims Act, although many of these state laws apply where a claim is submitted to any third-party payor and not merely a governmental payor program.

On October 25, 2018, the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promoted Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act of 2018 (“SUPPORT Act”) was enacted. The SUPPORT Act included the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018 (“EKRA”), which establishes an all-payor anti-kickback prohibition that extends to arrangements with recovery homes, clinical laboratories and clinical treatment facilities. EKRA includes a number of statutory exceptions, and directs agencies to develop further exceptions. Current exceptions in some cases reference and in others differ from the AKS safe harbors. Significantly, the prohibitions apply with respect to the soliciting or receipt of remuneration for any referrals to recovery homes, clinical treatment facilities, or clinical laboratories, whether or not related to treating substance use disorders. Further, the prohibitions cover the payment or offer of remuneration to induce a referral to, or in exchange for, an individual using the services of, such providers. This new law creates additional risk that relationships with referral sources could be problematic.

For anti-corruption legislation, the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) is the most widely enforced law. It is the first to introduce corporate liability, responsibility for third parties and extraterritoriality for corruption offences, meaning companies and persons can be held criminally and civilly responsible for corruption offences committed abroad. It was enacted for the purpose of making it unlawful for certain classes of persons and entities to make payments to foreign government officials to assist in obtaining or retaining business. With the enactment of certain amendments in 1998, the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA now also apply to foreign firms and persons who cause, directly or through agents, an act in furtherance of such a corrupt payment to take place within the territory of the United States. The FCPA also requires companies whose securities are listed in the United States to meet its accounting provisions, which were designed to operate in tandem with the anti-bribery provisions, require corporations covered by the provisions to (a) make and keep books and records that accurately and fairly reflect the transactions of the corporation and (b) devise and maintain an adequate system of internal accounting controls.

In Europe, various countries have adopted anti-bribery laws providing for severe consequences, in the form of criminal penalties or significant fines, for individuals or companies committing a bribery offence. Violations of these anti-bribery laws, or allegations of such violations, could have a negative impact on our business, results of operations and reputation. For instance, in the United Kingdom, under the Bribery Act 2010, which came into effect in July 2011, a bribery offense occurs when a person offers, gives or promises to give a financial or other advantage to induce or reward another individual to improperly perform certain functions or activities, including any function of a public nature. Bribery of foreign public officials also falls within the scope of the Bribery Act 2010. Under this regime, an individual found in breach of the Bribery Act 2010 faces imprisonment of up to 10 years. In addition, the individual can be subject to an unlimited fine, if found to have committed an offense, as can commercial organizations that are found to have failed to prevent bribery. Most recently, France has passed an anti-bribery and compliance law (“Sapin II”), and the new French anti-corruption agency (“AFA”) has been established. The Sapin II law makes it compulsory for companies within the scope of the law to implement internal procedures to fight corruption. One of the items that must be prepared is a corruption risk map, as well as an anti-corruption code of conduct. These documents are subject to investigation by the AFA and failure to comply with the requirements can lead to a fine of up to €1.0 million for a company and €200,000 for executives.

Currently, we are not subject to the jurisdictional requirements of the UK Bribery Act or Sapin II as we do not have offices in either country and do not employ a requisite amount of employees in these countries. If we were to have future growth in the European market, these laws could potentially apply to us.

U.S. Physician Referral Prohibitions

The Physician Self-Referral Law (“Stark Law”) prohibits physicians from referring patients to entities with which the physician or an immediate family member has a financial relationship, such as ownership, investment or compensation, for designed health services (“DHS”) payable by Medicare and Medicaid, unless the financial arrangement meets an applicable exception. DHS includes clinical laboratory tests. Penalties for violating the Stark Law include the return of funds received for all prohibited referrals, fines, civil monetary penalties and possible exclusion from federal health care programs. In addition to the Stark Law, many states have their own self-referral bans, which may extend to all self-referrals, regardless of the payor. See “Risk Factors—Risks Relating to Government Regulation—We are subject to various laws and regulations, such as healthcare fraud andabuse laws, false claim laws and health information privacy and security laws, among others, and failure to comply with these laws and regulations may have an adverse effect on our business.”

Corporate Practice of Medicine in the United States

Numerous states have enacted laws prohibiting business corporations, such as us, from practicing medicine and employing or engaging physicians to practice medicine, generally referred to as the prohibition against the corporate practice of medicine. These laws are designed to prevent interference in the medical decision-making process by anyone who is not a licensed physician. For example, California’s Medical Board has indicated that determining what diagnostic tests are appropriate for a particular condition and taking responsibility for the ultimate overall care of the patient, including providing treatment options available to the patient, would constitute the unlicensed practice of medicine if performed by an unlicensed person. Violation of these corporate practice of medicine laws may result in civil or criminal fines, as well as sanctions imposed against us or the professional through licensure proceedings. Typically such laws are only applicable to entities that have a physical presence in the state.

Other Regulatory Requirements

Our laboratory is subject to federal, state and local regulations relating to the handling and disposal of regulated medical waste, hazardous waste and biohazardous waste, including chemical, biological agents and compounds, blood and bone marrow samples and other human tissue. Typically, we use outside vendors who are contractually obligated to comply with applicable laws and regulations to dispose of such waste. These vendors are licensed or otherwise qualified to handle and dispose of such waste.

Our partners in the development of therapeutic agents are responsible for developing and manufacturing those products. In so doing, they are subject to FDA and Medicare regulatory requirements related to, among other things, manufacture, promotion, price reporting and fraud and abuse laws.

Our laboratories are subject to extensive requirements related to workplace safety established by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These include requirements to develop and implement programs to protect workers from exposure to blood-borne pathogens by preventing or minimizing any exposure through needle stick or similar penetrating injuries.

U.S. Healthcare Reform

In the United States, a number of recent legislative and regulatory changes at the federal and state levels have sought to reduce healthcare costs and improve the quality of healthcare. For example, in March 2010, the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) became law. This law substantially changed the way healthcare is financed by both commercial and government payors, and it has significantly impacted our industry. Since 2016 there have been efforts to repeal all or part of the ACA. For example, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”), among other things, removes penalties for not complying with the ACA’s individual mandate to carry health insurance. The U.S. Congress may take further action regarding the ACA, including, but not limited to, repeal or replacement. Additionally, all or a portion of the ACA and related subsequent legislation may be modified, repealed or otherwise invalidated through judicial challenge, which could result in lower numbers of insured individuals, or reduced coverage for insured individuals, and which could adversely affect our business. However, it remains to be seen whether or when new legislation modifying the ACA will be enacted, what any such the new legislation might provide and what impact it might have on the size and coverage of the insured population or on efforts to contain or lower the cost of healthcare. We cannot predict the implications, if any, of such legislation on our and our collaborators’ businesses and financial conditions.

We anticipate there will continue to be proposals by legislators at both the federal and state levels, regulators and commercial payors to reduce costs while trying to expand individual healthcare benefits. If enacted, some such proposals could expand or contract the insured population, increasing or decreasing demand for our products and services. On the other hand, some proposals could impose additional limitations on the prices we will be able to charge for our tests or on the coverage of or the amounts of reimbursement available for our tests from payors, including commercial payors and government payors.

The federal physician payment transparency requirements (“Physician Payments Sunshine Act”) and its implementing regulations, which requires applicable manufacturers of covered drugs, devices, biologics and medical supplies for which payment is available under Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, with certain exceptions, to annually report to HHS information related to certain payments or other transfers of value made or distributed to physicians, defined to include doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors, and teaching hospitals, or to entities or individuals at the request of, or designated on behalf of, the physicians and teaching hospitals, as well as ownership and investment interests held by physicians and their immediate family members. The SUPPORT Act, under a provision entitled “Fighting the Opioid Epidemic with Sunshine,” extends the Physician Payments Sunshine Act to payments and transfers of value to physician assistants, nurse practitioners and other mid-level healthcare providers, with reporting requirements going into effect in 2022 for payments and transfers of value made to these practitioners in 2021.

There are also state “sunshine” laws that require manufacturers to provide reports to state governments on pricing and marketing information. Several states have enacted legislation requiring medical device manufacturers to, among other things, establish marketing compliance programs, file periodic reports with the state, make periodic public disclosures on sales and marketing activities, and such laws may also prohibit or limit certain other sales and marketing practices. These laws may adversely affect our sales, marketing, and other activities by imposing administrative and compliance burdens on us. Although we have a system for tracking and reporting “sunshine” law required information, if we fail to do so as required, we could be subject to government enforcement action and potential penalties.

Coverage and Reimbursement Generally

Reimbursement and billing requirements of applicable laws and payors for diagnostic services are highly complex. Laboratories must bill various payors, such as private third-party payors, including managed care organizations (“MCO”), and state and federal health care programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and each may have different billing requirements. Depending on the reimbursement arrangement and applicable law, the party that reimburses us for our services may be a third party who provides coverage to the patient, such as an insurance company or MCO; a state or federal healthcare program; or the patient. Additionally, the audit requirements we must meet to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, as well as our internal compliance policies and procedures, add further complexity to the billing process. As such, we are at risk of being paid less or no part of our price for our products for reasons including:

• variability in coverage and information requirements among various payors;

• patient financial assistance programs;

• billings to payors with whom we do not have contracts;

• disputes with payors as to which party is responsible for payment; and

• disputes with payors as to the appropriate level of reimbursement.

In addition, we may not be free to determine the price charged for our products. Certain countries, including a number of member states of the EU, set prices and make reimbursement decisions for diagnostics and pharmaceutical products. Additionally, some countries require approval of the maximum sale price of a product before it can be marketed, and this price may be reviewed during the product lifecycle, or mandatory discounts or profit caps may be applied. In many countries, the pricing review period begins after marketing or product licensing approval is granted or the CE mark is obtained. We may therefore be constrained in our pricing strategies in markets outside of the United States.

For additional information on coverage and reimbursement in the United States, see “Risk Factors—Risks Relating to Government Regulation—Future Medicare paymentrates are uncertain.”

Our Compliance Program

Our compliance program is intended to prevent and detect violations of law or our policies. It was developed in view of both adopting the principles of the AdvaMed Code of Ethics and addressing the HHS OIG’s elements of a compliance program. We have designed our compliance program to fit the size, resources, market position and other unique aspects of our company. Our code of conduct is our statement of ethical and compliance principles that guide our daily operations. In addition, we have developed policies and procedures, and corresponding education and training, to effectively communicate our standards to employees as it relates to job functions and legal obligations under applicable state and federal healthcare program requirements, as well as those outside the United States. We regularly perform live and process monitoring activities on a risk-based approach, and audit capabilities are built into our transparency procedures. We maintain a hotline available via multiple channels to report any known or suspected compliance violations, and we have a strict non-retaliation policy for all claims brought forward in good faith.

Corporate Information

ADPT US Equity

ADPT · 10-K · period ended 2020-12-31

Item 1. Business

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ADPT · 10-K · period ended 2020-12-31

Item 1. Business

ADPT US Equity