For Dendreon, It’s 500 Prescriptions for Provenge and Counting

Last Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of Impact, the pivotal clinical trial that persuaded the FDA to approve Dendreon (DNDN) Provenge in late April.


NEJM publication, the company hopes, will establish credibility for the treatment, a therapeutic vaccine that enlists a patient’s own cells to arm the body’s immune system against cancer.
Today, in its second-quarter earnings release, the company reported its first ever revenue from the product. It wasn’t much — $2.8 million – and as Dow Jones Newswires reports, it fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.

An undetermined number of patients are awaiting prescriptions at the 50 centers authorized so far to prescribe Provenge. Some centers have waiting lists “30 to 60 patients deep,” Gold told the Blog.

The reason for the wait: The company doesn’t have enough manufacturing capacity to meet demand. In the company’s main plant in New Jersey, just 12 of a planned 48 workstations, where technicians process a prostate cancer patient’s cells to make Provenge, are operational. The rest are expected to be ready early next year.

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Original content Bob DeMarco, All American Investor