SAN FRANCISCO — The last time Sana CEO Steve Harr was here for the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, his company had only recently shrugged off the unprintable code name its founders used privately: FD Therapeutics, short for “F— Disease.” Little was known about the then-mysterious cell therapy startup, except that it would pursue ideas “that will seem unconnected to the current reality” and, rumor had it, potentially raise an over $1 billion Series A.
Today, Sana is a public company. It did raise prodigious sums, $700 million in a Series A and another $585 million in an IPO. Yet disease — well, disease remains with us.