Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing targeted therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, has established a wholly foreign-owned enterprise (WFOE) in the People's Republic of China. The new subsidiary, Peregrine Beijing Pharmaceuticals Technology Development Ltd., is located in Beijing.

"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," said Steven W. King, president and CEO of Peregrine. "China therefore represents an important strategic market opportunity for Peregrine, and our new wholly owned subsidiary will give us the opportunity to leverage our products and technology in this market. 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."

Separately, Peregrine announced that it has filed a lawsuit alleging breach of contract against its licensee Cancer Therapeutics Laboratories, Inc. (CTL), a California corporation that has licensed certain rights under the company's Tumour Necrosis Therapy (TNT) technology platform exclusively for development and commercialization in the People's Republic of China.

The lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Orange against CTL 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 a company in China named 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.

"We regret having to resort to a lawsuit, but CTL has not complied with our agreement to provide us with information related to the purported Medipharm sublicense or substantive data on their activities regarding the development and marketing of our TNT agent for lung cancer," said Paul Lytle, chief financial officer of Peregrine. "We therefore intend to vigorously pursue our rights and remedies."