Expensive Prostate Drug Complicated and Unpopular with Docs

Many doctors aren’t prescribing biotech company Dendreon’s experimental prostate cancer drug. The company’s stock shares dropped sharply after it announced it was firing workers and lowering its revenue forecast for the year. But the drug is hailed as a powerful, yet complicated way to fight cancer.

Two million men live with prostate cancer. Each year another 217,000 men are diagnosed and for 100,000 of them, it is in late stage and spreading. For them, there is little treatment hope. Or was until Provenge came along last year.

It works by teaching the cancer patient’s own immune system to attack tumors. Provenge has been lauded as an extremely innovative drug and Dendreon was hailed known as the darling of biotech companies.

Provenge is the first FDA approved prostate cancer immunotherapy treatment. Because prostate cancer cells and hide from or trick immune system T cells, Dendreon has created a unique personalized therapy that uses the patient’s own natural defenses combined with a unique protein to help immune cells find the cancer cells.

“For years scientists have been attempting to achieve an elusive goal — to stimulate the body’s immune system against cancer.” Dave Urdal, Chief Scientific Officer, Dendreon

Doctors seem to be getting sticker shock because Provenge costs $93,000 and until last month Medicare and Medicaid weren’t reimbursing for it.

According to information on the Provenge website, the drug vaccine teaches the immune system to attack cancer like it would any other non-lethal infection.

The company says it is moving into a big marketing push to get doctors in private practice to begin prescribing the expensive but effective drug. The median life expansion for men using Provenge is 4.1 months. It may not seem like a long survival time but many patients live much longer.