PEREGRINE PHARMA ESTABLISHES CHINESE SUBSIDIARY

Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, a company that develops targeted therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and hepatitis C virus infection, announced it has established a wholly foreign-owned enterprise in China. The new subsidiary is called Peregrine Beijing Pharmaceuticals Technology Development.

"The Chinese pharmaceutical market is currently the ninth largest in the world and is growing rapidly, doubling in size in the past five years with continued robust expansion expected," Steven King, president and CEO of Peregrine, said. "China also represents a tremendous resource for drug discovery and development, and we intend to explore all options for the development of our product candidates in China."

Additionally, the company said it has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. alleging breach of contract against Cancer Therapeutics Laboratories, which has licensed certain rights under the company's Tumor Necrosis Therapy (TNT) technology platform exclusively for development and commercialization in China.

The lawsuit alleges various breaches of contract, including failure to provide substantive clinical data to Peregrine from a sublicensing arrangement in China regarding Peregrine's TNT agent, failure to account for a purported current sublicense agreement with Chinese firm Shanghai Medipharm Biotech despite repeated attempts by Peregrine to obtain evidence of an agreement, and failure to provide an accounting of any revenue, equity and substantive data derived from that purported sublicense agreement.