Sana Biotechnology celebrated the beginning of a new chapter on its journey to make drugs that treat complicated diseases, cutting the ribbon outside the company’s new manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash., on Friday.
Sana broke ground on the 80,000 square-foot facility one year ago after switching from a site in Fremont, Calif.
The Bothell facility will house Sana’s proprietary cancer drug program. The cell and gene therapy company plans to manufacture other drugs at the same site in the future.
“To build a facility, you have to know your process,” said Sana CEO Steve Harr, “and to know your process you’ve had to make some reasonable progress in treating people.”
Sana, which launched in 2019 and had a record-breaking IPO in 2021, has one drug program ready for scaled production — allogeneic CAR-T cells targeting blood cancers like leukemia and autoimmune diseases.
Sana has developed a proprietary gene-editing mechanism that blinds a person’s immune system to engineered therapeutic cells, which it would attack in normal circumstances. This approach has cost-savings potential because it is more scalable than existing T-cell therapies, which involve using a person’s own cells.
Sana has four drugs in human testing: two for cancer, one for autoimmune disease and another for type 1 diabetes.
At the ceremony Friday, Washington Rep. Kim Schrier said she is among millions in the U.S. living with type 1 diabetes and called Sana’s research “breathtaking.”
The diabetes program involves turning stem cells into insulin-producing islet cells. After promising results in primate studies, Sana launched a human clinical trial with the technology earlier this year that is set to wrap up next spring.
The company hopes to build a manufacturing process for the diabetes drug at the Bothell facility once the science is ready to scale.
Harr said Sana spent more than $500 million on manufacturing sciences and building up manufacturing capability. Controlling the manufacturing process means Sana can monitor quality and hire its own personnel.
With the University of Washington’s Bothell campus just around the corner and other drug manufacturing companies in the neighborhood, Harr called the surrounding region a wonderful area for talent.
Sana took possession of the building, which is owned by Alexandria Real Estate, a few months ago and has up to 40 employees working in the facility. It is prepared to accommodate hundreds as the company expands operations.
Washington state Rep. Suzan DelBene, Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson, and Sana CTO Snehal Patel also participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Sana’s stock has fallen since the company went public three years ago, but is up 20% so far in 2024.
The company’s net losses grew to $107.5 million in the first quarter this year, up from $82.1 million in the year-ago period. R&D expenses were $56.4 million in Q1, compared to $67.2 million in the year-ago quarter. It had $311.1 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of March 31.
Sana said in October that it would laid off 29% of its workforce, citing a “strategic re-positioning” along with delays to certain projects. It previously cut 15% of its staff in November 2022.
The company had 328 employees as of December 2023.
Sana has a lab for clinical research in Seattle and additional locations in South San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass., as well as a small research group in Rochester, N.Y.
https://ift.tt/GbWa8B5 August 02, 2024 at 11:12PM GeekWire
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