- Invitae recently revealed that it is acquiring Jungla for approximately $50 million upon closing. These are the details behind the deal.
Recently, medical genetics company Invitae entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Jungla — which is a cloud-based platform that combines clinical knowledge with advances in functional genomics, biophysics, cellular engineering, machine learning, and distributed systems to help clinicians and patients understand the results of genetic and genomic tests.
The combination of the companies is expected to further enhance Invitae’s genetic variant interpretation and ability to deliver high-quality and more affordable genetic testing for use in mainstream medical care. And separately, Invitae announced the addition of RNA analysis to its commercial testing, beginning with patients undergoing cancer testing.
As part of the definitive agreement, Invitae will acquire Jungla for approximately $50 million upon closing. Of that amount, $35 million will be in Invitae common stock and $15 million of which shall be in cash subject to certain adjustments. Plus Invitae will pay up to $15 million upon the achievement of certain milestones, mostly in stock with the balance in cash.
“Interpreting the genetic variants observed during sequencing is what turns genetic data into decision-making power for patients and clinicians. Bringing Jungla’s technologies onto our platform will help us provide support to our patients in a scalable way,” said Sean George — the co-founder and CEO of Invitae. “Whether incorporating computational and experimental approaches for protein analysis or adding RNA analysis to augment variant interpretation, we lead the molecular genetic testing industry in leveraging advanced clinical genetic variant interpretation technologies that enable us to provide patients and clinicians with genetic information to inform healthcare decisions.”
Jungla’s Functional Modeling Platform (FMP) is known as an active machine learning engine that enhances clinical knowledge by continuously integrating functional, structural, and computational data into auditable and accurate predictive models for clinical variant interpretation. And the technology delivers performance that exceeds recommendations from the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) and the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) across hundreds of genes and conditions.
Jungla’s technology essentially augments Invitae’s ability to understand the impact of variants on molecular function — whether it is protein or RNA molecules — through the application of advanced methods in functional genomics, structural biology, and biophysics.
The technology — coupled with Invitae’s exacting, logical, and reproducible approach for variant classification and interpretation called Sherloc, — can help Invitae deliver more informative results to patients.
Back in November 2018, Invitae and Jungla successfully completed a 4-month pilot study of the performance of Jungla’s proprietary technologies in predicting the clinical relevance of differences in human DNA sequence (variants) found in individuals undergoing testing for hereditary disease.
The results demonstrated that support from Jungla’s FMP can markedly increase the molecular understanding of variants while maintaining the high accuracy of Invitae’s classifications thus significantly increasing the efficiency of interpretation and scalability of genetic testing with enhanced quality of test results.
In addition, the prospective integration of Invitae’s knowledge-base and Jungla’s technologies is expected to optimize clinical guidance and leverage the data from each patient to improve results for the next. And the results show that Jungla’s technologies can clarify the interpretation of variants, moving them from the uncertain category to pathogenic or benign status.
“At Jungla, we are continuously applying and combining advances in molecular, cellular, and computational technologies to the complex work of genetic variant interpretation with the goal of making it easier to conduct the highest quality genetic interpretation at scale,” added Carlos Araya — the co-founder and CEO of Jungla. “Our team has been at the forefront of technologies to accelerate the understanding of variants for nearly a decade. Combining our learning engine with Invitae’s rigorous interpretation framework will extend the reach of our technology and help more patients and clinicians get the information they need.”
As most gene changes associated with a hereditary disease have their effect by directly altering the functions of the protein that is specified by that gene, a small fraction of gene changes are known for altering the way messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are made in the body. And a growing area of research has focused on using RNA analysis to help resolve variants of uncertain significance (VUS) — especially those VUS that are predicted to affect mRNA creation (also known as RNA splicing).
In order to contribute to this research and further reduce the uncertainty inherent in genetic testing results, Invitae has added supplemental RNA testing for VUS that are predicted to affect RNA splicing and have been identified in a gene from any of our hereditary cancer panels.
And Invitae’s approach to supplemental RNA analysis, RNA-seq, includes both qualitative (evaluation of abnormal mRNAs) and quantitative (the amount of mRNAs) results — which ultimately provides deeper insight into the variant-disease relationship compared to the use of qualitative results alone.
RNA analysis is now in use as a component of Invitae’s VUS resolution program as applied to Invitae’s hereditary cancer syndrome gene testing with broader application in other disease areas planned for later this year.
“The addition of RNA analysis to our variant classification pipeline provides another tool to reduce the number of variants that cannot be confidently classified based on DNA sequencing alone,” explained Robert Nussbaum — the chief medical officer of Invitae. “By applying this technology first to those cancer genes and variants where it is most immediately useful, we can provide deeper, more complete genetic information for patients and clinicians making critical clinical decisions.”
