Sana Biotechnology raises more than $700M for cell, gene therapy efforts

A startup company developing in vivo and ex vivo cell therapies has raised a significant chunk of funding for its initial financing from life science and technology venture capital as well as pension plans and others. Seattle-based Sana Biotechnology said Tuesday that it had raised more than $700 million from a wide range of investors, including ARCH Venture Partners, Flagship Pioneering, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Baillie Gifford, F-Prime Capital, the Alaska Permanent Fund, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, Bezos Expeditions, GV, Omega Funds, Altitude Life Science Investors and several others that were not named publicly. The company is developing cell as well as gene therapies and plans to use the money it has raised on its discovery and development efforts. It announced its launch in January of last year, with the stated goal of developing means of in vivo delivery of DNA, RNA and proteins to reprogram specific cells, as well as making cells at scale ex vivo in order to replace damaged or missing cells in the body. Other capabilities Sana is developing include ways to hide allogeneic cells from the immune system in order to prevent their elimination or rejection. While the currently approved CAR-T cell therapies are autologous, relying on patients’ own cells, allogeneic cell therapies use cells from donors.