Seattle-based Sana Biotechnology is moving on from its current Fremont, California manufacturing facility, inking a lease deal to develop a manufacturing plant in Bothell, Washington.
Sana President and CEO Steve Harr/Courtesy of Sana Biotechnology
Seattle-based Sana Biotechnology is moving on from its current Fremont, California manufacturing facility, inking a lease deal to develop a manufacturing plant in Bothell, Washington. The site will be about 80,000 square feet and is expected to result in $100 million in savings over the next three years.
The new location will be designed to support manufacturing of the multiple products across the company’s cell and gene therapy portfolio as it shifts into late-stage clinical development and early commercial activities. Bothell is close to Sana’s R&D facilities in Seattle. Like most biopharma companies, it will continue to partner with contract manufacturing organizations (CMO) for production capacity.
Sana has programs in both in vivo engineering (gene therapy) and ex vivo engineering (cell therapy). It is developing potential medicines to treat cancer, type 1 diabetes, heart disease, central nervous system disease and various genetic disorders.
The new facility will be located at 3555 Monte Villa Parkway in Bothell, part of an industrial project at Alexandria Center for Advanced Technologies – Monte Villa. The lease is good for 16 years with an option for three additional five-year terms.
In a statement to BioSpace, Sana said, “We are excited about this facility, as it is close to our corporate headquarters in Seattle and provides cost savings of over $100 million in the next three years compared to our previously planned Fremont, CA facility. We are also excited to tap into the local Seattle area talent when we begin operating this plant. We expect this to result in hiring of additional positions in Bothell as we build out the site.”
In addition, the company has appointed Snehal Patel to head its internal and external manufacturing and Julie Lepin to head regulatory affairs. Before joining Sana, Snehal was the global head and vice president for cell therapy manufacturing at Bristol Myers Squibb. Lepin joined the company from Amgen, where she was vice president, regulatory affairs for oncology.
“We have long viewed an internal manufacturing capability as core to our long-term success in consistently making these complex medicines at the scale and cost needed to maximize our impact,” Steve Harr, Sana’s president and chief executive officer said in a statement. “This new facility enables us to continue to develop our internal manufacturing with no anticipated impact to the timing of our programs, and in a more cost-effective manner. Importantly, we continue to attract the strong talent needed to execute on this vision and our pipeline more broadly. I am excited to welcome Snehal and Julie to Sana.”
Sana has been all over the news of late. In mid-May, Dr. Terry Fry, M.D., senior vice president, head of T-cell therapeutics at Sana, was appointed to head a newly created Gates Institute at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where Fry is also a clinical professor of pediatric oncology. The Gates Institute is funded by the Gates Frontier Fund, and CU Anschutz and is expected to grow to $200 million over the next five years.
Fry is not leaving Sana. At the time, Harr said, “Terry is a leader in the cell and gene therapy space, particularly in developing CAR T therapies for cancer patients. We are proud of Terry and his appointment at the University of Colorado Gates Institute, as his close collaboration with academia will continue to be extremely valuable to the field and to Sana as we explore diverse scientific tools to modify genes and use cells as medicines to change the outcome of many human disease. Terry’s appointment further underscores the high caliber of talent that we have throughout the Sana organization and adds to the number of our team leading institutes in top academic centers.”
Sana is primarily focused on cell and gene therapies, with CAR T-cell therapies leading the way. At the company’s first-quarter financial report on May 10, Harr said, “In the first quarter, we made significant progress in moving toward clinical trials for programs across our multiple platforms including the ex vivo hypoimmune allogeneic CAR T (SC291) and in vivo fusogen CAR T (SG295) programs, and we remain on track to file INDs for both of these programs this year.” He also highlighted SC451, a hypoimmune stem-cell derived pancreatic islet cell therapy for patients with type 1 diabetes.
The company also inked an exclusive deal with the National Institutes of Health for global commercial rights to the NIH’s CD22 CAR with a fully-human binder. This product has demonstrated efficacy in several clinical trials, including in CD19 CAR T cell therapy failures. Sana believes that targeting CD19 and CD22 with an “off-the-shelf” product with either of its own platforms, hypoimmune or fusogen, could result in more durable complete response rates in early-stage patients in addition to patients that have failed to progress with an autologous CD19 CAR T-cell therapy.
Sana was founded in 2018 by Hans Bishop, Noubar Afeyan, Robert Nelsen and Steve Harr. Bishop was the former chief executive officer of Juno Therapeutics. By 2020, the company raised about $700 million in two seed rounds and a Series A round. It raised $587.5 million in its initial public offering on February 4, 2021, and at that time had a market valuation of $6.4 billion.
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