{"id":171324,"date":"2010-01-12T11:36:12","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T16:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/01\/12\/biotech-news-provenge-for-prostate-cancer-tysabri-for-ms\/"},"modified":"2010-01-12T11:36:12","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T16:36:12","slug":"biotech-news-provenge-for-prostate-cancer-tysabri-for-m-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/171324","title":{"rendered":"Biotech News: Provenge for Prostate Cancer, Tysabri for M.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SanJ.P. Morgan is hosting its big drug-industry conference<\/a> this week in San Francisco. Here are a couple tidbits from the first few days:<\/p>\n

Sales of the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri<\/strong> topped $1 billion last year, Biogen Idec said<\/a> today, and the number of patients taking the drug neared 50,000. <\/p>\n

On the one hand, that’s notable, given that the drug (which Biogen co-markets with Elan) was pulled from the market<\/a> in 2005 because of safety concerns. On the other hand, Biogen recently said its CEO will step down later this year, a move that Dow Jones Newswires said<\/a> was linked in part to concerns about Tysabri’s growth trajectory. The CEO, James Mullen, will be speaking at the conference at 4:30 Pacific time today. You can tune in online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Biogen Update:<\/strong> Mullen said that there were 28 known cases of a rare brain infection in M.S. patients receiving Tysabri treatment as of mid-December. That’s up from 24 that regulators reported in October. Here\u0092s more from DJ Newswires<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dendreon now has about $600 million in cash<\/strong>, which came largely from a supplemental stock offering<\/a> in December. Dendreon has had a long road trying to win FDA approval for Provenge, a vaccine intended to treat advanced prostate cancer; a decision from the FDA is expected by May 1.<\/p>\n

The vaccine is tailored to each patient; manufacturing it is a complex chore that involves taking cells from the patient and shipping them to the company for processing. The company is using some of its cash to speed up its build-out of manufacturing facilities. Here’s the Dow Jones Newswires story<\/a> on what the CEO said yesterday; here’s a Webcast<\/a> of the presentation.<\/p>\n

Photo: Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n

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J.P. Morgan is hosting its big drug-industry conference this week in San Francisco. Here are a couple tidbits from the first few days: Sales of the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri topped $1 billion last year, Biogen Idec said today, and the number of patients taking the drug neared 50,000. On the one hand, that’s notable, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}