DNDN - NASDAQ
AP, USA Today, NY Times and others feature this news story. Important and amazing announcement. Low o/s.
If you consider this as a play, strongly consider entering in pre-market trading....very soon!
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Vaccine may extend life for prostate cancer patients
By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY
In a milestone in the race to make an effective cancer vaccine, scientists announced Wednesday that an experimental vaccine prolongs survival in men with advanced prostate tumors.
Doctors present findings on a new and promising prostate cancer treatment.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
The Provenge vaccine, made by Seattle-based Dendreon Corp., is an important achievement in the 20-year struggle to develop a cancer vaccine, says Eric Small, a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco who led the study. He will present his findings Saturday in Orlando at the 2005 Multidisciplinary Prostate Cancer Symposium.
The company-financed study focused on 127 patients with advanced cancer that did not respond to hormone therapy, a standard treatment, Small says. After three years, 34% of patients on Provenge were alive, compared with 11% of those who took a placebo. Men who took Provenge lived an average of nearly 26 months, or 41/2 months longer than the others. Although that might not sound significant, doctors note that advanced cancer treatments are commonly approved by the Food and Drug Administration even if they extend survival by just a few months.
Nicholas Vogelzang, director of the Nevada Cancer Institute, cautions that the trial was small and that patients appeared to be healthier than average. Vogelzang, who also will present research at the symposium, says the trial doesn't yet prove that vaccines are more effective than approved treatments, such as chemotherapy. Yet if Provenge were available today, he would consider it for his patients. "It's safe and it may be positive, so there's little to lose," he says.
Dendreon's top executive, Mitchell Gold, says his company will work with the FDA to bring the vaccine to market as quickly as possible. Gold says the most common side effects caused by Provenge are mild flu-like symptoms that go away in a day or two.
Unlike traditional vaccines, which aim to prevent disease, cancer vaccines aim to treat existing tumors by boosting the immune system, Small says.
The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 232,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, and more than 30,000 will die from it.
