Dendreon won FDA approval for a $93K cancer drug — and went bankrupt four years later

Dendreon was founded by William Haseltine, Edgar Engleman and Samuel Strober to develop Provenge (sipuleucel-T), an immunotherapy for metastatic prostate cancer. The treatment used the patient's own immune cells, reprogrammed to attack cancer cells. On 29 April 2010, the FDA approved Provenge — the first cancer immunotherapy ever approved in the United States.

Provenge was priced at $93,000 per patient. The complex manufacturing process required shipping each patient's blood cells to a central facility and back within days. Physician adoption was slow because of the logistical complexity, the high cost, and the limited survival benefit — Provenge extended life by about four months on average. In August 2011, Dendreon abandoned its revenue forecast and its stock fell 66% in one day.

Dendreon filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2014, just four years after its historic FDA approval. The company was later acquired by Valeant Pharmaceuticals for about $400 million — a fraction of the billions in market value it had once commanded. Provenge continued to be sold under new ownership.