Dendreon Seeks OK to Grow NJ Factory

Dendreon (NASDAQ: [[ticker:DNDN]]), the Seattle-based maker of an immune-boosting therapy for prostate cancer, said today it has applied for FDA approval to essentially quadruple the capacity of its New Jersey factory. The company has FDA approval currently to make sipuleucel-T (Provenge) at 12 workstations, and the new filing is to seek permission to do the work of making the drug at 36 more workstations, bringing it to a total of 48. The FDA typically takes about four months to review such amended manufacturing applications, the company said. While important to Dendreon, the company has said it will need to get two more factories in the Atlanta and Los Angeles areas up and running in 2011 before it can meet demand from patients.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.