Sana Biotechnology, Inc. SANA

We were founded on the belief that engineered cells will be one of the most important transformations in medicine over the next several decades. The burden of diseases that can be addressed at their root cause through engineered cells is significant. We view engineered cells as having the potential to be as therapeutically disruptive as biologic drugs to clinical practice, enabling us to repair cells in the body when possible and replace them when needed. We have developed ex vivo and in vivo cell engineering platforms to revolutionize treatment across a broad array of therapeutic areas with unmet treatment needs, including type 1 diabetes, oncology, and B cell mediated autoimmune diseases.

For our ex vivo platform, we have made focused investments in our hypoimmune platform technology, which we refer to as our HIP technology, with the twin goals of engineering allogeneic cells that can "hide" from the patient's immune system to overcome the fundamental challenge of immune rejection and cell persistence and that we can manufacture at scale. A successful therapeutic requires cells that can engraft, function, and persist in the body, and we believe our approach can unlock a wave of disruptive therapeutics, starting in type 1 diabetes. For in vivo therapies that aim to repair or control genes in the body, a successful product candidate requires both gene modification and in vivo delivery of the therapeutic payload. Our initial focus is on cell-specific delivery of genetic payloads, known as chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), to a patient's T cells, resulting in the generation and proliferation of CAR T cells, which have been shown to deplete a patient's disease-causing B cells.