Seattle-based Sana Biotechnology Inc. (Nasdaq: SANA) has named two new senior leaders as Chief Medical Officer Sunil Agarwal prepares to leave the biotech.
Sana announced Agarwal's resignation in April and said it was naming Gary Meininger as chief medical officer and Douglas Williams as president of research and development.
“We are thrilled to welcome Doug and Gary to Sana,” Steve Harr, Sana’s president and CEO, said in a release. “We are making rapid progress in transitioning from a research-based company to one focused on delivering innovative gene and cell-based medicines to patients."
Sana disclosed in November it was discontinuing investment in its candidate aimed at heart failure and laying off about 15% of its staff.
Meininger was most recently a senior vice president at Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where he spent about four years. Before Vertex, he spent more than eight years at Janssen, according to Sana. He also spent time at Merck earlier in his career.
Williams, meanwhile, is joining Sana from Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Codiak BioSciences, where he was president and CEO. Williams spent close to eight years there, according to his LinkedIn page, before which he was an executive vice president at Biogen for more than four years. He previously worked at ZymoGenetics and Bothell-based Seagen.
Sana, which launched in 2019, is focused on repairing and controlling genes in cells. The company has pre-clinical candidates aimed at diseases ranging from leukemia to diabetes. Sana went public in 2021 through a $587.5 million initial public offering.
At the time of the November layoffs, Sana said it had cash runway into 2025. The company also has operations in San Francisco and Cambridge, and it's developing and leasing a roughly 80,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Bothell, replacing its Fremont, California, facility.
Agarwal had been with Sana for close to five years, according to his LinkedIn page. Before that, he was CMO at Novato, California-based Ultragenyx.
“I would like to take this occasion to thank Dr. Sunil Agarwal for his work in building the development organization and ushering forward Sana’s pipeline," Harr said in a release. "Sunil has been a partner in defining the company strategy and hiring top talent into the company."
