Pfizer, Adaptive Biotechnologies Collaborate

Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer and Adaptive will seek to combine drug development and platform technology biomarker expertise to identify patients who may preferentially benefit from immunotherapy.

Understanding and reliably measuring each patient’s immune response to their cancer before and after therapy is critical to defining the most appropriate immunotherapy for that patient.  Adaptive’s immunosequencing platform quantitatively and reproducibly measures the patient’s immune-cell repertoire, providing a powerful translational tool to accelerate Pfizer’s immuno-oncology biomarker and drug development programs. 

“Immunotherapy is one of the most important advances in cancer therapy and offers the potential for long term disease control for many patients,” said Chris Boshoff, Vice President and Head of Early Development, Translational and Immuno-Oncology at Pfizer Oncology. “Pfizer is investing significantly in this space.  The collaboration with Adaptive Biotechnologies supports our strategy of accelerating the development of potentially innovative new combination treatments by allowing us to develop a differentiated and competitive understanding of the immune landscape in specific tumor types.”

Adaptive Biotechnologies, the leading experts in profiling the immune cell repertoire, will work with Pfizer to apply their proprietary immunosequencing platform technology, bioinformatics capability, and scientific expertise to advance Pfizer’s rapidly expanding immuno-oncology pipeline.

“This collaboration with Pfizer is evidence of the immense impact immune repertoire profiling may have on the immuno-oncology space,” said Chad Robins, President, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at Adaptive Biotechnologies. “Adaptive’s ability to precisely measure a patient’s immune response to cancer before and after treatment provides a universal tool that will help bolster our understanding of immuno-oncology approaches.”