There was not a lot of additional information on the conference call that was not in the press release. Management mentioned that the survival data was consistent in all three Phase III trials. Median survival was 4.5 months in the D9901 study, 3.2 months in D9902A and 4.1 months in this study. Anything over 4 months is very good. The existing therapy, Taxotere, was approved based on a median survival of 2.8 months and, of course, Provenge is safer with almost no meaningful side effects. Taxotere is administered over six months, with each course of therapy flattening the patient for several days. Provenge involves three infusions over one month, with one or two days of flu-like symptoms after each infusion.

Taxotere was approved with 18% of patents alive after three years. Dendreon’s three Phase III studies of Provenge showed 34%, 32% and 32% of patients alive after three years, a remarkably consistent result. Combining all three studies together shows 737 patients with a 26.5% reduction of risk of death, compared to the 22.0% hurdle in the IMPACT study.

Management also mentioned that in some earlier studies they followed patients for one to five years, and found a persistent immune response even at five years. They also gave some of those patients a booster infusion and got an increase in the immune response. I am sure they will do a label expansion study for the booster regimen, which could dramatically increase their revenues per patient and make my revenue model much too low (see http://newworldinvestor.com/572/dendreon-a-360-stock-or-is-that-too-low/).

Regarding partnering, they said: “I think it is fair to say that this data has attracted a lot of interest, but we are not going to comment on anything else beside that.” That’s more than they’ve said so far, and it increases my confidence that preliminary meetings have already been held with some number of potential partners.

In yesterday’s Flash Alert following the presentation, I reacted to the bizarre plunge in the stock in two minutes right before the presentation by saying: “When the stock reopens tomorrow, I expect it to trade between $20 and $30, depending on how well the conference call goes.” After the conference call, it was back to $25 to $26 a share in the aftermarket. Many commentators have mentioned this “mysterious, unexplained” drop. There’s no mystery to it: It was a bear raid pulled off by a conspiracy of shortsellers. They knocked the stock down to set off stop-loss points, and then bought low to cover.

At least one of our subscribers was caught in this. CW wrote: “I had a stop-loss in place for DNDN at $16.50 and it was filled at $8.00. Should I buy it back at this price now $11.82 or sit it out?”

Here is my answer, which applies to any of you who were similarly mousetrapped:

“I suspect it will open in the $20s, so you are a victim of the bear raid. I’m filing a complaint with the SEC and will cite this - would you rather be anonymous or can I use your name and email address?

“I think the right thing to do is wait to see if you can get it under $20 again. If that doesn’t happen this week, I would buy MELA for the FDA filing and then wait for an opportunity to buy DNDN. If DNDN does not trade down, then swap the MELA for ARNA in July/August. After ARNA reports its final Phase III results in September, you’ll have time to get back into DNDN before the FDA resubmission before the end of the year, and I think you’ll find you can buy just as many shares or more than you had before the scammers ran the bear raid.”

I am raising the buy limit on DNDN to $20, while maintaining my $40 target. If you want to do the DNDN into MELA into ARNA into DNDN trades, wait for all the analysts to scramble onto the train and publish their new target prices for DNDN over the next several days. I will send a Flash Alert when the time is right to make these swaps.