Seattle-based biotech company Sana Biotechnology Inc. (Nasdaq: SANA) on Monday named Dhaval Patel as its chief scientific officer.
Patel was a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina and at Duke University. He is joining Sana after the biotech opened its 80,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Bothell earlier this month.
“I am delighted to join Sana at this exciting time of growth," Patel said in a news release. "I am eager to collaborate with this talented team to accelerate our journey towards groundbreaking advancements and real-world impact.”
A Sana spokesperson said Patel is the company's first CSO. Douglas Williams, previously Sana's president of research and development, resigned for personal reasons in April. Sana will now have development report directly to co-founder and CEO Steve Harr, according to the spokesperson, while Patel will manage research.
Between his residency, postdoctoral work and teaching, according to his LinkedIn page, Patel spent about 14 years at Duke, and he has spent about 21 years at UNC. His industry work includes more than 10 years at the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis and more than six years at the biopharmaceutical company UCB.
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Sana was launched by Harr and Hans Bishop, former Juno Therapeutics executives, in 2019. The company is focused on repairing and controlling genes in cells, and its treatments are aimed at cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases and central nervous system diseases.
Before Sana, Harr was the chief financial officer at Juno, which was acquired by Celgene for $9 billion in 2018.
Sana in the fourth quarter of last year laid off almost 130 workers. Through an underwritten public offering in February, Sana raised about $165 million, before underwriting discounts, commissions and other expenses. According to a regulatory filing, Sana had 328 employees at the end of 2023. The company had $618.7 million in assets at the end of June, up from $565.3 million at the end of last year.
When Sana opened the Bothell facility this month, it had about 30 people working there but planned to have more than 60 employed at the facility in the coming months. Harr previously told the Business Journal he hopes to have hundreds of employees working there in five-plus years.
Sana started building the facility in July of last year. It replaced plans for a larger Sana facility in Fremont, California, and Harr expects the switch to save Sana about $100 million over a three-year period. The company also has offices in South San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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