Trade Alert: Buying Fear

Taking advantage of the drop in Sana Biotechnology

What just happened

• Dilution headline. On Wednesday night Sana Biotechnology ( SANA 0.00%↑) priced a $75 million secondary at $3.35 and also issued 1.49 million pre-funded warrants at $3.35 each. That’s roughly a 11% add to the float (after including shares sold through the ATM) and pushed the stock down ~30% intraday on Thursday.

• Key scientist exit. Dr. Sonja Schrepfer, who led Sana’s hypo-immune program, listed a new academic role on LinkedIn this week. Twitter biotech sleuths immediately sounded alarm bells—but the consensus among specialists is that her part of the work is largely finished and the baton now moves from discovery to clinical execution.

• Cash problem solved—for now. With the raise, Sana should end Q2 with >$500 million in liquidity versus a trailing-twelve-month burn of ~$290 million. That extends runway into 1H-2026 and removes the “going-concern” question that dogs so many pre-revenue biotechs.

Why the next seven days matter

Sana hasn’t posted the 8-K yet, but multiple earnings calendars now show the Q2 update on Thursday, August 14, before the market opens, followed by an 8 a.m. ET conference call. The company typically uses these calls to walk through:

1. Pipeline timing – investors want an IND date for the CD22 hypo-immune CAR-T and an update on the in-vivo fusogen program.

2. Cash & runway – now a much cleaner story after the raise.

3. Regulatory signposts – especially around the hypo-immune platform we discussed in the earlier post.

A constructive call could spark a relief rally: short interest is >12 % of float and the average sell-side target sat in the mid-$6s even before the financing.

How I’m playing the event (big picture)

Instead of buying common, I’m using a risk-defined option structure that costs nothing upfront, caps the worst-case drawdown at a few hundred dollars, and keeps the upside open if Sana squeezes back toward $5 – $6 after earnings. It’s the same philosophy we’ve used on other high-IV, catalyst-driven names this year:

• Harvest elevated short-dated put premium created by today’s panic.

• Own a slightly OTM call into the print so we participate if guidance improves.

• Cap downside in case the call is a dud or the tape stays risk-off.

Why bother? A reminder of the thesis

In May’s post we noted that Sana’s hypo-immune platform aims to make donor cells invisible to the host immune system—an approach that, if it scales, could remove the need for chronic immunosuppression in organ and cell therapies.

The early New England Journal of Medicine data on hypo-immune stem-cell transplants was the “proof-of-concept” Dr. Schrepfer wanted to shepherd into publication. Now the science pivots to clinical execution:

• Type-1 diabetes (encapsulated β-cells)

• Allogeneic CAR-T (CD22 program)

• Longer-horizon organ replacement work with partners

Those are multi-billion-dollar addressable markets—but the street understandably wants to see execution and cash discipline. Yesterday’s raise funds the first question, and next Thursday’s call may answer the second.

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Bottom line: the market just handed us a financing-induced reset in a platform-tech name that still has plenty of binary risk—but also plenty of asymmetry. By picking up short-dated put premium and owning cheap calls into earnings, we let the sellers finance our lottery ticket while capping what we can lose. Subscribers can scroll down for the precise trade ticket and the stop/target GTC orders I’m using.

Today’s SANA Trade