Dendreon Corporation announced that Provenge?, the Company's investigational vaccine for the treatment of prostate cancer, "significantly improved survival" in men with asymptomatic, metastatic androgen-independent prostate cancer when compared to patients receiving placebo.

Patients receiving Provenge had a 4.5 month improvement in their median survival and more than 3-fold increase in survival at 36 months when compared to patients receiving placebo.

The survival benefit that is seen with Provenge is the largest ever reported in this patient population with any therapy. This survival benefit that is combined with a favorable safety profile, has the potential to provide an important new treatment option for prostate cancer patients.

The patients receiving placebo had a relative risk of dying that is 70 percent higher than those patients receiving Provenge. In addition to 34 percent of patients receiving Provenge were alive at 36 months compared to 11 percent of patients receiving placebo.

The survival benefit seen with Provenge was very much independent of a patient's Gleason Score, a common measure of disease severity. Provenge was well tolerated with the most common adverse effects reportedly being fever and chills lasting for one to two days.

Provenge is designed to stimulate the patient's immune system against prostate cancer. It was developed through Dendreon's proprietary Antigen Delivery Cassette? technology, which utilizes a recombinant form of an antigen found in 95 percent of prostate cancers, prostatic acid phosphatase.

Provenge is being further evaluated in an ongoing, pivotal Phase 3 trial under a Special Protocol Assessment agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.