Provenge's IMPACT

Billions of dollars and more than two decades have gone into the effort to create cancer vaccines that work. After multiple clinical failures, the idea finally got some validation last week, as Dendreon Corp. reported positive top-line survival results for Provenge sipuleucel-T, an autologous dendritic cell immunotherapy to treat metastatic prostate cancer.

Notwithstanding the fact that investors immediately jumped into cancer vaccine stocks, oncology researchers say the success holds only limited lessons to inform the disparate approaches to the design and development of cancer vaccines. For the time being, it looks like the key takeaway on the design side is that Dendreon's autologous, ex vivo approach for designing an active immunotherapy was the right product for the right patient population...