Dendreon’s hard lesson: know your customer

The trashing of Dedreon’s stock price happened less than 24 hours ago and a lot of speculation is underway as to why they missed their revenue target.  Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot just posted an interview he did with a Los Angeles urologist where he tried to find out if reimbursement concerns are the real issue behind the lagging sales.  It’s an excellent article and I encourage you to read it.

I won’t spoil the punchline from Ed’s article, but it appears that Dendreon’s mistake is one that a lot of start-ups make.  It’s a hard lesson to learn, but I think we can all benefit by reminding ourselves: “It’s not about the product, it’s about the customer.”  It’s something that we often forget about in biotech where the “wow!” factor of a new drug can overshadow the fact we still have to get the drug to the patient.