Dive Brief:
- As of February 23, Valeant started laying off the 77 Dendreon employees slated for termination after Valeant's $495 million takeover of now-defunct Seattle-based Dendreon.
- Most of the positions being terminated are general and administrative positions that Valeant considers redundant.
- Dendreon's main product is Provenge, a personalized drug for the treatment of prostate cancer, which costs roughly $93,000 per patient.
Dive Insight:
The in on the takeover agreement is not even dry yet, but Valeant has already started aggressively cost-cutting.
In reality, Dendreon employees have already seen a number of layoffs, going back to November 2012 when it filed Chapter 11 and the size of the staff went from 1,475 employees to 698 employees by the time Valeant took it over.
Valeant is determined to accelerate the growth of Dendreon over the coming years, starting with this cost-cutting measure, and most likely, more to come.