BioPharma, Diagnostics

After filing for IPO, ArcherDX agrees to $1.4B buyout by Invitae

ArcherDX had filed with the SEC earlier this month for a $100 million initial public offering. The two companies said combining would enable cancer patients to access a variety of testing products and services from one source.

Office workstation top view of business people working around M&A, keyboard, calculator, phablet and money on wooden table - merger and acquisition concept

A diagnostics company that earlier this month had signaled plans to go public is taking a detour to the exit doors by agreeing to be acquired.

San Francisco-based genetics company Invitae will put up about $1.4 billion to acquire Boulder, Colorado-based ArcherDX, a genomic analysis company focused on precision oncology, the two companies said Tuesday.

The companies said that combining together would enable cancer patients to access germline and somatic testing, liquid biopsy and tissue genomic profiling through a single platform in order to test for risk, therapy optimization and personalized monitoring of their disease.

Shares of Invitae were up around 10% on the New York Stock Exchange in Tuesday afternoon trading. The approximately $1.4 billion deal includes $325 million in cash and 30 million shares of Invitae upfront, plus up to 27 million Invitae shares payable on the condition of certain milestones being met.

ArcherDX and Invitae share a foundational belief in the power of genomic information to impact care,” ArcherDX CEO Jason Myers said in a statement. “We are thrilled to unite with Invitae to form the leading hub for precision oncology, diagnostics, therapy optimization and monitoring, with an opportunity to accelerate both patient care and shareholder value.”

It was only on June 5 that ArcherDX said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it would seek to raise $100 million through an initial public offering.

In the meantime, it has formed partnerships with a variety of drug companies both to use its products in clinical trials and to develop companion diagnostics.

Last week, it signed a deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb to use its assays to aid the application of monitoring for minimal residual disease in clinical trial protocols. On May 26, it announced an agreement with British drugmaker AstraZeneca to develop assays for use in Phase III clinical trials of immuno-oncology drugs, with ArcherDX performing whole exome sequencing of tumor samples from patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Bristol-Myers Squibb markets two immuno-oncology drugs, namely the PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab) and the CTLA4 inhibitor Yervoy (ipilimumab), while AstraZeneca markets the PD-L1 inhibitor Imfinzi (durvalumab).

Also last month, ArcherDX and German drugmaker Bayer announced a deal to develop a next-generation sequencing diagnostic to detect NTRK fusions for use with the marketed TRK inhibitor Vitrakvi (larotrectinib).

Photo: Kritchanut, Getty Images

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