Home health remedies Long-suffering Dendreon finds new avatar as contract manufacturer for cell therapy partners

Long-suffering Dendreon finds new avatar as contract manufacturer for cell therapy partners

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Filing for bankruptcy in 2014 might have seemed the end for Dendreon. But seven years later—and three rounds of being bought and sold—the company has resurfaced.

This week, Dendreon revealed plans to establish a CMO division offering end-to-end manufacturing of complex cell therapies. The company’s fortunes rose quickly with a once-thought to be promising prostate cancer drug, Provenge, but fell just as quickly because of the prohibitive cost of producing the cell therapy.

Now, it hopes to take advantage of those hard lessons learned in manufacturing. Dendreon will leverage its “manufacturing, process development and logistics expertise,” according to its release, to bring late-stage clinical assets through to commercialization.  

RELATED: Dendreon chairwoman figures Provenge growth, infrastructure can pave its way into CAR-T

“Innovative cell therapies have the potential to change how we treat serious diseases, but there is currently insufficient capacity to meet anticipated industry demand,” CEO Jason O’Neill said. 

Dendreon says it is one of just four companies in the U.S. that is manufacturing cell therapies for commercial use. It began building its capacity within its existing infrastructure in January of this year.

RELATED: Dendreon changes hands—again—in $868M deal that keeps seller Sanpower in the game

Its 180,000-square foot facility in Seal Beach, California, will serve as the Seattle-based company’s contract manufacturing hub. Seattle will house its process development and manufacturing sciences center.

“With more than a decade of proven expertise in cell therapy manufacturing and an established supply chain and logistics infrastructure, we have invested in an offering that fills an immediate market need in this rapidly expanding field,” O’Neill said in the release.

It is a long way from 2015, when Dendreon’s assets were sold for $495 million to Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, which kept the company’s supply contracts and employee base intact. 

RELATED: Dendreon, done in by expensive, complex manufacturing, files for bankruptcy

Two years later, Valeant unloaded its equity interest in Dendreon, selling to China’s Sanpower Group for $820 million. A year after that, Sanpower sold Dendreon for $868 to Nanjing Cenbest, a Chinese retailer that was branching out into healthcare.

The fact that the price tag for Dendreon kept rising was some sign of faith in the positives the company could bring. 

Now comes a focus on contract manufacturing.

“We are looking to establish partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies developing CAR-Ts, autologous or allogenic cell therapies,” Maria Cho, Dendreon’s head of business development and corporate strategy, said in the release.  Provenge, FDA-approved in 2010, is an autologous cell therapy, or one that is manufactured based on tissue from the patient being treated, compared to allogenic therapies, which are so-called off the shelf products, produced from general donor tissues. 

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