Dendreon
Targeting Cancer, Transforming Lives
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| Public | |
| Industry | Biomedicine |
| Successor | Valeant Pharmaceuticals |
| Defunct | 2015 |
| Headquarters |
Russell Investments Center Seattle, Washington, US |
| Products | Provenge |
| Services | Provenge |
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Number of employees
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1497 |
| Website | www |
Dendreon was a Seattle biotechnology company. Its lead product, Provenge (known generically as sipuleucel-T), was an immunotherapy for prostate cancer. It consists of a mixture of the patient's own blood cells (autologous, with dendritic cells thought to be the most important) that have been incubated with the Dendreon PAP-GM-CSF fusion protein. Phase III clinical trial results demonstrating a survival benefit for prostate cancer patients receiving the drug were presented at the AUA meeting on April 28, 2009. After going through the approval process, Provenge was given full approval by the FDA on April 29, 2010. Dendreon's stock value fell 66% on August 4, 2011, after abandoning its forecast for its debut drug Provenge.
In November 2014, Dendreon filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and shortly afterwards announced that it had reached agreements on the terms of a financial restructuring with certain bond holders.
On February 20, 2015, Valeant Pharmaceuticals received approval to purchase all Dendreon assets.
Dendreon's name derives from the "Dendritic Cell" which forms a major component of the company's product candidates that use the "Dendreon Cassette Technology" to insert a disease-specific target protein into a general platform. Their lead product, Provenge, is an example of their "rationally designed therapeutic process" intended to break immune tolerance to certain disease specific proteins. It is hypothesized that receptor mediated uptake of antigen by dendritic cells occurs when they are exposed to the Dendreon fusion protein which links the disease specific protein to a recognition protein. This approach is in contrast to other dendritic cell vaccines that use methods such as electroporation to get the DC's to present antigen related epitopes. In the case of Provenge, this disease related protein is prostatic acid phosphatase and the signalling component is GM-CSF.
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Wikipedia