BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Sacrifice the Bishop

Dendreon COO ousted; staff cut 25% on weak sales of Provenge for prostate cancer

September 12, 2011 7:00 AM UTC

Dendreon Corp. (NASDAQ:DNDN) EVP and COO Hans Bishop took the fall last week for the weak market launch of prostate cancer therapy Provenge sipuleucel-T. Bishop was ousted as part of Dendreon's resulting headcount reduction of about 500, or 25% of employees.

During the product's first year on the market, it appears that Dendreon was so focused on manufacturing constraints that it failed to account for potential adoption and reimbursement issues, especially as it began to broaden its outreach from academic centers to the community practices that treat about 70% of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) patients (see BioCentury, Aug. 8)...