Sangamo files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

After more than a year of mounting cash pressure, Sangamo Therapeutics has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is selling its pipeline through a court-supervised process, with Eli Lilly and Astellas emerging as the stalking horse bidders.

Lilly is pursuing Sangamo's capsid delivery technology (STAC-BBB), zinc finger nuclease, and modular integrase platforms, plus an early-stage AAV-based prion disease program (ST-506). The two companies have history — Lilly paid $18 million upfront last April to license STAC-BBB for a CNS gene therapy, in a deal worth up to $1.4 billion at milestones. 

Astellas had also inked a STAC-BBB licensing deal with Sangamo, paying $20 million upfront in December 2024 for one target, with the right to add up to four additional neurological diseases targets in a potential $1.3 billion deal. Now, however, Astellas is bidding for the more advanced asset, ST-920, a pivotal-stage gene therapy for Fabry disease that Sangamo submitted for BLA review on a rolling basis in March 2026 under the accelerated approval pathway.

Other company assets, including the clinical-stage ST-503 program to treat chronic neuropathic pain, the giroctocogene fitelparvovec program to treat hemophilia A, and Sangamo’s cell therapy and regulatory T cell assets, are not included in either stalking horse bid, and are also expected to remain available to interested bidders at the auction.

As part of the process, Sangamo will lay off 52 employees — roughly 40% of its workforce — while retaining 77 to support the programs at the center of both bids.