Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc and Affitech AS plans to collaborate on the production of human antibodies for Peregrine's Vascular Targeting Agent (VTA) and anti-angiogenesis programs. In this collaboration, Peregrine will provide targets and Affitech will apply its high-quality human antibody libraries and its proprietary discovery and screening technologies, including its unique AffiScreen platform, to generate a panel of fully human antibodies against the targets. The agreement allows flexibility for the development of any clinical candidates that are generated, including joint development, internal development at Peregrine or Affitech, or out-licensing to a third party. Details of the financial terms were not disclosed.

"We are very pleased to enter into this collaboration with Affitech to expand our VTA and anti-angiogenesis programs," stated Steven King, Peregrine's president and CEO. "Our mutual goal is that, through this collaboration, we will be able to identify a number of fully human monoclonal antibodies that can be used either for our VTA or anti-angiogenesis technology platforms. Along with clinical candidates that we have already identified and other collaborations that are underway, we believe we will be able to have several VTAs in the clinic with unique target and effector functions."

Commenting on the collaboration, Dr. Ole Jorgen Marvik, CEO of Affitech said, "This is a very significant partnership for us, and we are excited to be able to enter into this deal, especially because of Peregrine's dedicated research and development efforts in anti-angiogenesis and Vascular Targeting Agent programs." Dr. Marvik further stated, "This is our third collaboration deal that we have secured in the past two months and all of them are in the oncology field. Given the general success of monoclonal antibodies in the cancer area and in line with Affitech's strategies and ambition to build a pipeline of successful anti-cancer antibody products, we confidently look forward to leverage our validated technology together with Peregrine's patented targets, as well as their long-standing expertise in the development of tumor targeting agents."