The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and a historic inauguration made this week a little light on Seattle biotech news, but we still gathered some interesting nuggets.
—Seattle-based Dendreon (NASDAQ: [[ticker:DNDN]]) made news on the last day of the JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco, saying that it now expects to have final results in April from its pivotal clinical trial called Impact. This study, of 500 men, is designed to show whether the company’s experimental immune-boosting treatment can help patients with terminal prostate cancer live longer.
—Seattle Genetics said it has taken a key step toward bringing its first drug to the marketplace. The Bothell, WA-based company (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SGEN]]) said it reached an agreement with the FDA on the design of a pivotal clinical trial of its “empowered antibody” for Hodgkin’s disease, SGN-35. The company hopes to apply for FDA approval to market the drug in 2011.
—ImaRx Therapeutics, a company developing an ultrasound-based treatment for stroke, has moved from Tucson, AZ, to Redmond, WA. This company, led by former Icos manager Bradford Zakes, hit the rocks last year and was de-listed from the NASDAQ, and hopes to bounce back this year.
—I did some informal polling of 10 different biotech executives from around the country while attending the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference last week. This local installment includes some advice on how to make it through the downturn from Seattle Genetics CEO Clay Siegall, and Rick Stewart, the CEO of Cardiac Dimensions, a Kirkland, WA-based medical device developer.
