Adaptive co-founders Harlan (left) and Chad Robins on the plaza at the new Adaptive Biotechnology headquarters. (GeekWire Photos / Charlotte Schubert)

After doubling its workforce during the pandemic, Adaptive Biotechnologies finally has room to grow.

The company on Tuesday will cut the ribbon on its new 100,086 square-foot headquarters in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, with Gov. Jay Inslee the keynote speaker.

The building, at the site of a former gym and smoothie shop near Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, approximately doubles the footprint of the company, which also has a presence in San Francisco and New York. The 782-employee company will also retain its nearby existing 66,000 square-foot space.

Adaptive was spun out of Fred Hutch in 2009 with technology combining computational and laboratory methods to assess the immune response. The company joined the public markets in June 2019, raising $300 million, foreshadowing a string of public debuts for Washington biotech companies and a focused involvement of the region in COVID-19 research.

Adaptive now markets kits that test for COVID-19, blood cancer and more, and its multiple drug company partnerships include COVID-19 vaccine and cancer cell therapy research projects.

Co-founders and brothers Chad and Harlan Robins have complementary expertise. Harlan, former head of the the computational biology program at Fred Hutch, serves as chief scientific officer. Chad, a former executive at real estate, investment banking, private equity, and medical technology companies, is CEO. (When they have disputes, the pair call on their mother to mediate.)

The new 100,000 square foot building has 20,000 square feet of lab space and is built for 321 employees.

The brothers also had complementary ideas about what they wanted in a new building. Harlan thought about how to integrate the building’s features into the company’s scientific workflow. His main concern: “How do you optimize efficiency?”

“We had to custom design it to be around our particular workflow. But you have to keep it modular enough, in case you change that workflow,” said Harlan in an interview with GeekWire at the new headquarters. “It’s sort of this combination of trying to be as efficient as you can but allowing for easy changes at the same time.”

Chad considered how to create a welcoming and collaborative scientific culture with the building design.

“From my perspective, we wanted to create a space that people wanted to come to that facilitated collaboration,” said Chad. “We wanted a feeling of hey, this is awesome, this is where I want to be.”

The building has plenty of space for collaboration and interaction.

Adaptive has signed a long-term lease for the new building, at 1165 Eastlake Ave. E, which was completed on time and within budget.

The new headquarters was developed in close partnership with Seattle architect Ben de Rubertis of national firm Flad Architects and the building’s owner, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.

Alexandria was also selected by the city in 2019 to develop the Mercer mega block, a project that includes 770,000 square feet of lab space with an additional 417,000 square feet planned on nearby parcels, according to a recent report from real estate services company JLL.

The new construction activity should provide relief to a life sciences community crunched for lab space. Life sciences employment increased 21% from 2010 to 2019 in the Seattle-Bellevue area, according to the JLL report, as biotech booms in the region.

“Our thriving live sciences community is world-class and will benefit our state and our world for generations,” said Inslee in a statement before the afternoon ceremony. “I am glad their new corporate headquarters and lab facility is in the heart of Seattle with an exciting fusion of artificial intelligence, machine learning and biotechnology.”

The labs are designed modularly — the bench space is mobile and can easily be reconfigured.

The pandemic charged Adaptive’s research efforts, putting the squeeze on its workspace.

“Because we were working under so much pressure and with such a sense of urgency, it’s allowed us to really accelerate some of our technological innovations,” said Lance Baldo, Adaptive’s chief medical officer in a separate interview.

The company ramped up rapidly as the pandemic accelerated, supporting the development of COVID-19 vaccines. It forged partnerships with Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and more recently Moderna to help assess the immune response to their vaccines.

In February the company released a test for the virus based on immune cells that are a mark for ongoing and prior infection, “T-Detect COVID.”

The new building will expand the space for this core area of the company. Adaptive focuses on analyzing T cells and assessing key molecules on their surface, T cell receptors.

“In some ways, you can think of this as our T cell building,” said Harlan.

T cells recognize foreign invaders via T cell receptors, helping launch the immune response. T cell receptors come in many different flavors, each recognizing different components of an invader — such as the different parts of the COVID-19 virus.

The building has triangular motifs throughout that resemble T cell receptors, key molecules on T cells that recognize foreign molecules.

The company’s technology catalogs T cell receptors through DNA sequencing and analysis. About half of its science workforce has a computational background, some of whom are already working in the new building as the lab space is completed over the next few months.

The company performs deep analysis of different T cell receptors to determine which ones correspond to which conditions, such as COVID-19 infection. Such projects form the cornerstone of an ongoing collaboration with Microsoft.

Just like it has built a T cell test for COVID-19, Adaptive is also building tests for Lyme disease and inflammatory bowel disease and is aiming for other conditions, such as multiple sclerosis.

All of these different use cases begin with the same step — processing human blood samples and extracting DNA. And that begins in the basement of the new facility, where samples will be delivered directly from the loading dock.

“The core chemistry is exactly the same,” said Baldo. “Lyme gets run in the same production lab as COVID, as will the next product as well.”

Samples enter the lab directly from the loading dock in the basement, where the co-founders are pictured here. The basement floor is devoted to processing blood samples, and will have more than 40 employees.

After preparation, the samples are ferried up to the next floor for further analysis. The labs on each floor are all connected by a dumbwaiter, assuring they never leave the lab environment. “It’s like 1800s technology,” quipped Harlan, adding that it was not simple to build.

The company also has announced a recent partnership with the biopharma company Vaccibody to develop a COVID-19 vaccine designed to elicit a strong T cell response. Most vaccines are designed to boost antibodies, but a T-cell focused vaccine has the potential to build longer-lasting immunity.

In its approximately 30,000 square foot San Francisco location, the company focuses on cell therapy projects for cancer. It has an ongoing collaboration with Roche’s Genentech to develop T-cell based cellular therapies tailored to each individual’s tumor. Next year the companies expect to file an investigational new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a key step before initiating a clinical trial.

In the new building, about 20,000 square feet is devoted to lab space, which includes an area to research new automation processes, a lab to optimize the chemistry behind the company’s tests, and other research and development space.

Windows are everywhere at the new HQ. This one overlooks the construction site for another research building.

The building is full of light and has lots of access to outdoor areas. A large garage-like door  opens onto a patio overlooking Lake Union, and there is a 5,500 square foot rooftop deck. Open office space is interspersed with nooks, mini-lounges and collaborative areas. “There’s a lot of cool touch-down spaces,” noted Chad.

About half the workforce is still largely working from home during the Delta COVID-19 surge, after initially returning. “As our business expanded during COVID, it was strange where half the space was quite empty, and then the lab was bursting at the seams,” said Chad.

Chad anticipates that the new space should help lure everyone working from home back as the pandemic eases. He added: “We are taking the carrot approach.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated with more details and a statement from Gov. Inslee.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.