Dendreon's Gold: What's Next for Provenge

Biotech executives can spend an entire career without ever pushing a new drug across the finish line. Dendreon's(DNDN) Mitch Gold doesn't intend to be one of those executives.

The CEO of the Seattle-based drugmaker says he's barely stopped to catch his breath, let alone see his family much, since April 28 when the company's drug Provenge was shown to extend the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer.

In the three weeks since that transformative event for Dendreon, Gold and his team have raised a pile of money (including some for themselves), started the process of readying Provenge for another review by U.S. drug regulators, jump-started the hiring of a commercial sales operation and dusted off plans for a significant expansion of Provenge manufacturing capacity.

On top of all that, Gold and Dendreon's CFO, Greg Shiffman, have been both courting and interrogated by institutional investors. For a long time, much of Wall Street looked askance at Dendreon; today many of those same investors are believers, and others are kicking the tires trying to decide if Dendreon, a $21 stock today, could double or triple on a Provenge approval and successful launch.

"We're getting tons of investor interest in the company," said Gold, speaking in a downtown Boston hotel room Tuesday afternoon during a short break from what had been two days of nonstop investor meetings.

"We used to come to these investment conferences and be handed a list of one-on-one [investor] meetings. Now, we're booked into two- and three-on-one meetings, and seven- and eight-on-one meetings. It's incredible."

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