Sana Biotechnology Reviews

Five years, and $1,000,000,000 later, they have two INDs for the same candidate, one of which was cleared nearly a year ago and has faced significant delays. This should speak for itself, but if it doesn't, consider also: Sana has missed nearly every corporate goal it has ever set by a wide margin. When it IPO'd in 2021, the company set a goal MULTIPLE clinical data readouts across two platforms within the next year or two. As of November 2023, it has yet to see any data from its singular candidate, SC291. All the while, Sana has burned through almost its entire war chest with spending habits that would make Mike Tyson look like Suze Orman. Three sites, multiple acquisitions, a manufacturing facility that's mostly for show, and an bloated bureaucracy of highly skilled, highly paid professionals whose talents are wasted by disengaged, unfocused, directionless management. Promotions, by and large, come out of a black box and are mainly given to sycophants and schmoozers whose entire purpose appears to be self-promotion, networking and navel-gazing while passing off the actual lab work to anyone else. As a result, very little has gotten done in terms of scientific progress given the massive investments Sana has made. The productive team members were largely laid off in one of the THREE rounds of layoffs over the past year, which, I stress, wouldn't have been necessary if the company had even come close to achieving the goals it outlined after its IPO. Layoffs were executed with brutal efficiency, over a zoom meeting that everyone in the company was watching, whether they were included in the layoff or not.

I hope I don't run out of word count. The CEO is extremely arrogant and indecisive. A few weeks before the RIF in Nov 2024, he 'had a dream' of "What if Sana was a diabetes company?", while clearly ignoring the fact that the only approved drugs for clinical trials are for Oncology and Autoimmune diseases and the diabetes research is still preclinical and at the time the IST data wasn't even available. Early on the company invested in too many programs rather than focusing on a couple. At one point some seven programs running at once with a 500-strong team. It takes a special talent to raise $700 million and then burn everything to the ground. Despite being in Phase 1 on two clinical trials, they continued to pour money into a manufacturing site (while not having an approved drug to manufacture). The entire C suite is out of touch with reality and decisions are made to fulfill arbitrary corporate goals as opposed to allocating resources to keep the company afloat. The company post-layoffs shall be primarily a middle management-heavy organization with barely any lab staff left to support the very reason this company was established: Engineering cells as medicines. The company culture has been on a steady decline since the first layoffs in Nov 2022 and absolutely no efforts were taken to fix it. HR team even stopped company surveys after the second layoffs as people started to openly criticize the management. Promotions are based on who screams the loudest as opposed to ones who actually work. It also helps if you are chummy with a VP or equivalent. The VP of a group once proclaimed that the first year in the company shall not be considered valid experience for promotions as you're still 'learning', and a week later the Executive VP of the same team claims to work in Sana for a year should count as 7 years in other companies. Currently, the Diabetes program is led by an MD with autoimmunity, implantation and the Autoimmunity by an MD with diabetes experience who himself happens to be diabetic. Such is the wonderful organization of portfolios. The CEO would host Friday meetings where he would filibuster and often misspeak some of the most ridiculous things humanity has ever heard. Notable mentions: 1. Our daughters are the future and they need to see how their parents work hard. Let's get them in labs to see us perform the awesome science we do. (This was followed by an email from the CTO reminding people the labs are out of bounds for those not trained for safety ESPECIALLY non-employees and that includes kids). 2. Since COVID we have gotten distant and we are stuck onto screens. All employees have to be on-site to foster a sense of collaboration. (HR had to chime in that this was meant for hybrid employees and fully remote ones weren't obligated). 3. (When asked why were two latest additions to the C-suite were both Caucasian males) We couldn't find any eligible candidates (As if there's absolutely nobody out there who has experience in diabetes/ oncology/ autoimmunity with senior management experience who also happen to be women) 4. A long ramble on how hating CEOs is unfair (After the UnitedHealthcare incident).