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Business & Tech

$10-Million Biotech Lab Brings Jobs and the Fight Against Cancer to Seal Beach

Dendreon Corp. aims to play a major role in the biotech industry with $100,000 prostate cancer vaccine.

Half-day fishing barges, tanned surfers and a small-town Main Street are making room for a new Seal Beach identity, that of a major player in Southern California’s burgeoning biotechnology race.  

Dendreon Corp. (Nasdaq: DNDN), a Seattle-based biosciences firm and maker of the much-heralded and 2010 FDA-approved Provenge prostate cancer vaccine, has helped Seal Beach shake off some of the decades of job losses from the aerospace industry. And the biotech firm's Seal Beach site is about to ramp up production of Provenge as a result of the FDA's June 29 approval of the manufacturing facility, which could add hundreds of new jobs to the local economy.  

“I can say we’re getting the prestige of having a major biomedical facility in our city,” said Mark Persico, Seal Beach’s development services director, who helped oversee Dendreon‘s move into the city. “I’ve toured the facility, and I don’t pretend to understand the science they do in there.”  

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Provenge is made from prostate cancer patients’ own cells. Provenge, though, comes with a hefty price tag—around $100,000 per patient for three infusions—and it's unclear how many people can afford the vaccine, which so far can buy up to four additional months of life.  Its supporters hope the biotechnology can have a significant impact on the fight against cancer.

As for the company’s local impact, Persico concedes he doesn’t know the exact monetary bump to Seal Beach’s local economy. “We just don’t track those figures,” he said.  

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Ahmed Anany, president of the Southern California Biomedical Council of Greater Los Angeles, said he anticipates increased activity at the Seal Beach facility as Provenge becomes a more popular prostate cancer treatment.  

“From what I know, they’ll be adding around 500 new jobs,” Anany said. “It’s obviously an addition to the bioscience industry in our community." 

Dendreon spent nearly $10 million in what Seal Beach city officials describe as retrofitting the interior of the 170,800 square-foot complex at 1700 Saturn Way near Westminster and Seal Beach boulevards in what's known as the Pacific Gateway Business Park.   Seal Beach officials said Dendreon purchased the building from Boeing, but the exact terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed.     

“Dendreon has become a very significant employer, since people who work there may relocate to that city and certainly spend money at local businesses," said Larry Kosmont, president and CEO of Kosmont Cos., a Los Angeles-based development services firm. Kosmont, a former Seal Beach city assistant city manager from 1978 to 1981, said he always thought Boeing, Rockwell International and other aerospace giants would be that city's future tax multiplier.  

“I don’t think any one of us thought you’d see a replacement over time of that industry," he said. "It would have been difficult to predict."

Heidi Hagen, Dendreon’s senior vice president of operations, said the company has seen increased activity at its Seal Beach facility since the FDA's recent approval.   “[Dendreon] is within the standards of the FDA review clock, and we are servicing products out of that facility,“ Hagen said. “It's been a great addition, as we had planned.”  

Seal Beach is one of three U.S. facilities manufacturing Provenge, servicing the Western U.S. The others are in Atlanta and New Jersey.   The Seal Beach site has 36 workstations, a figure expected to rise as the demand for Provenge increases, Hagen said.   Dendreon so far has only made projections about its product not only for its Seal Beach location but also for its two other facilities. Hagen, who's responsible for manufacturing and supply chain operations, said it's something the company historically hasn’t shared before because of what she termed "competitive reasons."  

"It's wonderful that scaling up with this kind of vaccine is happening in Southern California," said Dr. Jonathan W. Simons, president and CEO of the Santa Monica-based Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF).  

Provenge is a cell-based vaccine targeted at men in advanced stages of prostate cancer, with each dose being created with dendritic cells from a person's own blood.   Dendreon, in a company-produced video, contends that no two doses are the same, basically because they come from a prostate cancer patient's own blood cells.  

Simons said the PCF, part of the Milken Institute, supported Provenge's research at the University of San Francisco that "really made the Dendreon vaccine look valid."

"We didn't fund [Dendreon], we funded the immunology, and that's a big difference," he said. "I'm just glad they are creating smart jobs."   Dendreon's Hagen said the choice of Seal Beach was fundamentally how it could best serve their patients.

"Seal Beach is a great place to draw from the employee base we would be seeking," she said. "It was driven largely by logistics."

Shares of Dendreon closed down 34 cents at $38.80 Friday on trading of 145,832,000 shares on Nasdaq.

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