I Don’t Understand Dendreon’s Prostate Cancer Drug?
I ran across this very interesting article at Bloomberg.com (read it here). Yesterday, Dendreon Corp, a biotechnology company more than doubled in market value after erasing a 45% drop (the same day) when trading was halted before the company said its lead drug worked against prostate cancer.
The reported stated, “The drug, Provenge, extended the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer by four months in a study that Seattle-based Dendreon presented yesterday to a meeting of the American Urological Association in Chicago. Provenge, if approved, would be the first drug designed to train the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells like a virus. The medicine stands to generate $2 billion a year in revenue, said Joel Sendek, an analyst for Lazard Capital Markets Ltd. in New York. “
There are 2 things that struck me about the report. The first is the drug only prolongs life by 4 months for people with advanced prostate cancer. Am I missing something here? What the hell is four months? That’s it? A measly four months? And the drug is expected to do $2 billion in revenues. I don’t get it.
If I had an advance stage fatal disease and was told a drug would prolong my life by 4 months, it would be meaningless to me. It’s not as if I will get 4 months of quality life. The drug is designed to prolong my misery for an additional 4 months. It’s not a cure, it’s just a very temporary, more than likely, expensive band aide.
The second thing that struck me about the article is that some investors quickly made a nice return on their money while others quickly lost money due to the wild swing in the share price. The stock market can be brutal!
The report highlighted how Dennis Thorfeldt, a retired computer systems analyst, who purchased shares during the past week at about $17.70 after learning about Provenge from members of his cancer patients support group. Mr. Thorfeldt had placed a stop-loss to protect his investment. However, because of the wild swing with the stock price, all of his stocks sold at $9.31. Mr. Thorfeldt then watched the stock jump to $23.76. That has got to hurt. Mr. Thorfeldt tried to protect his money and it backfired on him.
A similar situation happened to me several years ago during the Internet stock market frenzy. There was an Internet stock that announced some good news (can’t recall company or news) at the market close. I then made the mistake of placing a market order to purchase shares at next day opening. The stock opened at about double its previous days closing price only to then immediately drop a good 30% after. In a matter of seconds I lost a few thousand dollars. It ruined my day!
Related Article: Stock Buy / Sell Order Types Defined
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9:05 pm on April 29th, 2009
Provenge has never been touted as a cure. Yes, I agree that 4.1 months does not seem like a lot of time, but remember:
1- The approval of taxotere when it was approved (currently the only approved drug for advanced prostate cancer) also demonstrated only a little longer than 4 month life extension.
2- Like taxoter, I believe that time will show that Provenge will demonstrate a very significant tail in the life extension numbers.
3- The numbers submitted to the FDA for approval two years ago had not matured enough to demonstrate the survival advantage which the FDA required. Allowing the study to continue gave time for the survival advantages to become evident. Remember, the course of prostate cancer disease progression is slower than most other cancers, so it stands to reason that we need to wait longer to allow more men from the placebo group to die to compare it against the experimental group. I believe that as time progresses, if the statistics are continued being kept we will see an even larger survival advantage than just 4 months (this is just my guess).
4- Many believe that the time needed to show the survival advantage is a result of the fact that Provenge takes time to “teach” the immune system to work against prostate cancer. Therefore, if Provenge were administered to less advanced men their immune systems would have more time to react and fight the cancer and their survival rate might even be better than the current 4.1 months. This will take the results of a separate clinical trial to verify.
We really have very limited numbers of tools to fight advanced prostate cancer. Having this additional tool will allow the creative oncologist to “play with” different combinations and schedules of treatments and hopefully further increase survival time.
If approved, Provenge will be the first cancer vaccine ever. Its approval will help encourage other companies to continue to make an investment with similar and better treatments, It is a small step, but a very important step. Personally, I am very excited about the numbers, more for the potential it might offer.
Joel T Nowak
Director of Advocacy and Advanced Prostate Cancer Programs
Malecare, Inc. -Men Helping Men with Cancer
http://www.advancedprostatecancer.net
http://www.malecare.com