Dendreon Investor Meeting: Provenge Sales Guidance for Six Months 2010

Updates below

New York, NY (TheStreet) -- I'll be covering Dendreon's(DNDN Quote) investor meeting today.

A nice idea: Dendreon is taking investors on a tour of its New Jersey manufacturing plant after the meeting wraps up in New York. Provenge manufacturing has been one of the Street's concerns, so taking investors out to the facility to see first hand how the prostate cancer immunotherapy is made is a smart way to dispel any fears.

Dendreon CEO Mitch Gold said the company will file Provenge with the Food and Drug Administration in mid-November, a refinement of its broader fourth-quarter filing guidance. The company did not announce a European partnership this morning, in line with expectations.

Update at 10 AM EDT:

Dr. Charles Drake, an immunotherapy expert at Johns Hopkins' Kimmell Cancer Center, discussed the basics of cancer immunotherapy, which uses a patient's immune system to target and kill cancer cells.

Drake said his preference would be to use an immunotherapy like Provenge earlier in the course of a patient's prostate cancer, when the tumor burden is lower. That's potentially positive for Dendreon because it would open up Provenge to a larger pool of patients.

Dr. Mark Frohlich, Dendreon's chief medical officer, discussed the phase III Provenge data that was presented last May. You can find my write-up of that data here. He didn't present any new or updated data.

Frohlich also talked about future or ongoing Provenge studies, especially in patients with early-stage prostate cancer.

Dr. David Urdal, Dendreon's chief scientific officer, spoke about how Provenge is made. "Can we make this product? I'm here to tell you that yes we can," he said.