What happened
Shares of Sana Biotechnology (SANA -0.70%) rose 49.4% for the week as of Friday morning, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The biotech company's stock rose on news regarding two of its cell therapies, the first to treat Type 1 diabetes and the second to treat B-cell tumors.
Shares are up more than 24% this year but down more than 41% over the past 12 months.
So what
On Wednesday, Sana said its SC451 -- a pancreatic cell therapy to treat Type 1 diabetes -- was able to avoid allogenic and autoimmune rejection by the immune system when tested on mice.
On Thursday, the company said that SC262 -- a hypoimmune-modified allogenic CD19-directed car-T cell therapy -- could evade immune detection and kill tumor cells.
Both studies were in pre-clinical settings against mice. The important thing is that they might be able to overcome difficulties that some cell therapies have in overcoming our bodies' natural immune responses. Sana's hypoimmune platform is looking to build cells outside the human body that can "hide" from the immune system to allow the transplant of allogeneic cells without the need for immunosuppression.
Now what
The stock's move was enormous, but it is important to note that these were pre-clinical studies. The next steps for both therapies will be applications with the Food and Drug Administration for Investigational New Drug (IND) designations to allow them to be tested in clinical studies. The IND filing for SN262 likely will be this year, with the SC451 filing likely next year.
Sana said that as of the fourth quarter, it had $434 million in cash, enough to fund operations into 2025. The company has no revenue yet, and lost $269.5 million last year, or $1.43 per share.
It underwent significant cost-cutting last November, laying off 15% of its workforce after it ended its investment in SC186, a therapy designed to treat heart failure.
