A week before the FDA advisory committee meeting on Dendreon’s Provenge, investment analyst Adam Feuerstein predicted that if Provenge is approved it could generate over $100 million in sales in 2008. Feuerstein’s estimate is based on a projected price of $30,000 per year per course of the vaccine. His model assumes increasing numbers of men living with (and dying of) metastatic androgen independent refractory prostate cancer (AIPrC) over the next decade.

“Provenge, at least initially,” he writes, “will not be given to all prostate cancer patients. Instead, use will be restricted to patients who have metastatic, androgen-independent (hormone-refractory) disease, which means their cancer has spread beyond the prostate and it is no longer being controlled by hormone treatments. These patients will also be asymptomatic, which means they won’t have any outward symptoms, such as bone pain, which could signal new growth of their cancer.”

He estimates that 35% of the over 200 thousand men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer in any given year are not cured and sooner or later take androgen blocking treatments; and that of those 65% currently go on to chemotherapy.

“Provenge, if approved,” Feuerstein writes, “would slot between hormone therapy and chemotherapy.” His model assumes that if Provenge is approved, over the next decade more and more men will take it before chemotherapy, with up to 90% of all men with AIPrC will be taking it by 2012 at an annual cost of about 1$billion.

See Putting a Value on Provenge By Adam Feuerstein Senior Writer Thestreet.com, 3/22/2007