Biotech Dendreon files for bankruptcy protection
Reuters
1 hour ago
Nov 10 (Reuters) - Cancer vaccine maker Dendreon Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday after its potential blockbuster cancer drug failed to live up to expectations, saddling the company with heavy debt.
Dendreon's stock was down nearly 62 percent at 36 cents in premarket trading.
The Seattle-based biotechnology company said it had reached agreements on the terms of a financial restructuring with certain bond holders.
The restructuring may take the form of a standalone recapitalization, or a sale of the company or its assets, it said.
Under the agreements, senior noteholders will support a plan of reorganization to convert all 2016 notes to common equity of the reorganized Dendreon.
"With a large debt balance and high management turnover, the writing had been on the wall for some time that this was a possibility," Cowen and Co analyst Eric Schmidt said.
The company listed assets of $100 million to $500 million and liabilities of $500 million to $1 billion.
The company, which created the world's first cancer vaccine, has faced a plethora of obstacles - first, to get its treatment on the market and then in getting physicians to prescribe it.
Dendreon's sole product on the market, Provenge, approved by U.S. regulators in 2010, is designed to reprogram the body's immune cells to attack advanced prostate cancer cells.
The vaccine's sales dramatically failed blockbuster expectations as its hefty pricetag, uncertainty over insurance coverage and quality issues hurt its adoption.
The company's limited, costly manufacturing capabilities hurt margins and the emergence of easier-to-use rival drugs such as Medivation Inc's Xtandi and Johnson & Johnson's Zytiga, which are orally administered, have cut into sales of the vaccine.
Chief Executive Thomas Amick on Monday assured that Provenge would remain commercially available through the restructuring process.
The company can also conduct a court-supervised sale process for all or substantially all of its assets to a party that would continue producing Provenge.
Dendreon said it has significant liquidity to support all of its operations during the restructuring process and does not anticipate the need to raise any incremental financing.
The case is In: Dendreon Corporation, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, No. 14-12515.
(Reporting by Natalie Grover and Supriya Kurane in Bangalore; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Maju Samuel) |