Adaptive Biotechnologies names new CFO, restructures business lines

Seattle-based Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp. (Nasdaq: ADPT) has named Kyle Piskel as the biotech's chief financial officer.

Piskel, previously Adaptive's principal accounting officer, started his new role April 8. He replaced Tycho Peterson, who left at the start of April and is now a managing director at the investment bank Jefferies, according to his LinkedIn page.

"I am confident in the future prospects of the business, and I look forward to following Adaptive’s continued progress and success,” Peterson said in a news release.

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Piskel has worked with Adaptive for eight years, according to the company. He worked at Ernst & Young for more than seven years earlier in his career, his LinkedIn page shows.

In an April 2 release, Adaptive said it wants to increase the independence of its minimal residual disease (MRD) and immune medicine businesses. The company wants its MRD business to become profitable and continue investing in immune medicine. Adaptive initially decided to focus on these two business lines in March 2022, when it laid off about 100 workers.

MRD testing determines if a tiny number of cancer cells remain in the body after treatment, according to the National Cancer Institute. Adaptive's immune medicine pipeline, meanwhile, has treatments aimed at oncology, autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases.

In November, Adaptive said it was working with investment bank Goldman Sachs to explore alternatives to get the most value out of the two businesses, however the company subsequently announced it would keep operating the businesses internally.

Adaptive co-founder and CEO Chad Robins said in a November call with analysts that Adaptive's immune medicine business is functioning like an early-stage biotech, focused more on data and testing than revenue, but the MRD testing business has reached the commercial stage and needs to increase its market share.

"It's a fact that we have two distinct businesses, and they're at different stages of maturity. They have different value drivers, and they also have different investment requirements," Robins said at the time.

Chad Robins co-founded Adaptive in 2009 with his brother Harlan Robins, the company's chief scientific officer. The company went public 10 years later.

Adaptive had 709 full-time employees at the end of last year. The company generated $170.3 million in revenue last year, down from $185.3 million in 2022.