Dendreon's senior vice president of global commercial operations - who was hired to run the Provenge launch - has decided to leave at a time when the drug is just moving into the market. Varun Nanda was considered to be a key hire by Dendreon as he had experience with similar programs related to Roche's Avastin and Rituxan.
Dendreon’s chief operating officer, Hans Bishop, said in a statement on April 8 shortly after Nanda's hire. “Varun’s depth of experience launching Avastin and leading several breakthrough global oncology products will be highly relevant to our transformation from a purely R&D organization into a world-class commercial organization.”
Provenge has been plagued with manufacturing capacity issues hindering its suppply. It's been able to sustain sales of $9-10 M per month but ths falls far short of the $350-400M in sales the product is expected to generate annually.
Now, Nanda is gone without much explanation and Bishop assumes control in the interim while a replacement is found. See Xconomy.
Posted by Bruce Lehr November 19th 2010.
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