FDA Approves Provenge For Prostate Cancer Patients

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have just approved a new drug to treat men diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Provenge is the name of the drug, which is manufactured by Dendreon Corp and is the first of a new class of drugs to work by boosting the immune system to help fight the disease.

Provenge is approved for advanced prostate cancer which has spread to other parts of the body and is no longer responding to traditional therapies.

In clinical trials of Provenge, those prostate cancer patients who took the drug had an increased four months of life.

The drug is not cheap however, costing more than $90,000 for a full course per patient.

“The big news here is that this is the first immunotherapy to win approval, and I suspect within five to ten years immunotherapies will be a big part of cancer therapy in general,” said Dr. Phil Kantoff, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

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