Continuing to stoke its robust momentum over the trailing week, Sana Biotechnology (US:SANA) printed another strong performance on Monday, gaining nearly 9%. In sharp contrast, the benchmark S&P 500 index only moved up 0.33% during the same session.

Undergirding the intense interest in SANA stock is brewing enthusiasm for gene-editing innovations. The company is developing in vivo treatments to solve challenges that gene therapies can’t address, including several treatments targeting T cells to treat several blood cancers, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma.  

According to Sana’s fourth quarter of 2022 financial results and business updates disclosure, management stated its goal to submit two investigational new drug (IND) applications with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this year for SC262 and SG299.

SC262 is a “hypoimmune-modified CD22-targeted allogeneic CAR T therapy” while SG299 is a “CD8-targeted fusosome that delivers a CD19 CAR to target CD19+ cancer cells.” In particular, Sana’s hypoimmune platform intrigues investors because it can potentially create cells ex-vivo that can “hide” from the patient’s immune system, thus enabling the transplant of allogeneic cells without the need for immunosuppression.

Research Update

Recently, on April 12, Sana reported that Science Translational Medicine published a paper titled “Human hypoimmune primary pancreatic islets avoid rejection and autoimmunity and alleviate diabetes in allogeneic humanized mice.” In it, researchers noted that SC451 – Sana’s hypoimmune PSC-derived pancreatic islet cell therapy – avoided allogeneic and autoimmune rejection by the immune system.

“The replacement of defective or missing cells has been the goal for many diseases; however, immune rejection results in either systemic immunosuppression or therapeutic failure. Sana’s proprietary hypoimmune platform was developed to solve this problem,” said Sana President and CEO Steve Harr.

“The Science Translational Medicine paper details data demonstrating that hypoimmune pseudo islets developed with our hypoimmune technology survived and were able to reverse diabetes without any immunosuppression in humanized mice. Eliminating the need for insulin administration and reversing diabetes with normalization of blood glucose levels, and doing this without immunosuppression, would be a transformational advance for patients,” Harr added.

Unusual Options

Following the close of the April 14 session, SANA stock represented a highlight for Fintel’s screener for unusual stock options volume. Specifically, call volume landed at 1,268 contracts against an open interest reading of 906. Typically, call volume for SANA averages only 32 contracts.

On the flipside, put volume reached 105 contracts against an open interest reading of 217. On average, SANA stock puts only amount to 15 contracts.

Presently, SANA’s put/call ratio sits at 0.24. According to Fintel, the put/call ratio “shows the total number of disclosed open put option positions divided by the number of open call options. Since puts are generally a bearish bet and calls are a bullish bet, put/call ratios greater than 1 indicate a bearish sentiment, and ratios less than one indicate a bullish sentiment.”

Since the beginning of this year, SANA stock returned over 51% for stakeholders. However, the security remains a risky proposition. In the trailing one-year period, shares are off nearly 25%.

Big Money

For those unfamiliar, Sana raised $588 million in its February 2021 initial public offering. While that may seem like a staggering number, consider that it initially wanted to raise $150 million. Then, it rethought that and upped the amount to $397 million, before ultimately setting its sights on more than $600 million.

As Fierce Biotech reported at the time of its IPO, "the company is following the Moderna playbook of raising huge amounts of cash rather than the iterative approach commonly seen in biotech, where companies raise a bit of money at a time."

CEO Harr told the publication “We want to run more experiments to get to the truth right away and have the balance sheet, technology and people to grapple with what the truth is.”

Still, the company in November reshuffled its product pipeline and cut its workforce by 15%, as many other biotechs have done over the last 12 months.