Xenerex Biosciences, a subsidiary of AVANIR Pharmaceuticals, and Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. have announced that they have entered into an antibody research collaboration agreement, designed to discover, develop and potentially commercialise fully human monoclonal antibody therapies for the treatment of solid tumour cancers. “Our opportunity to work with Peregrine is yet another step forward in validating the unique technology that Xenerex offers to the biopharmaceutical marketplace,” said J. David Hansen, president and chief operating officer of Xenerex Biosciences.
“In partnering with Peregrine, we are expanding the number and types of proteins to which we can apply our antibody generation capabilities. Additionally, we are implementing our strategy of continuing to build our client base with partners also focused on novel treatments and technologies. We look forward to working with Xenerex for the generation of antibodies against several targets we have identified as being promising for our therapeutic antibody programs,” said Steven King, Peregrine’s Vice President of Technology and Product Development.
“Based on the strength of data from pre-clinical animal studies using murine antibodies against several different targets, we felt it was time to begin development of fully human antibodies that could potentially serve as candidates for clinical studies. We believe that Xenerex has the ability to efficiently generate these human antibodies. Based on data from our animal models, we feel that these antibodies have the potential to be used as unconjugated antibodies for the treatment of a variety of different solid tumours.”
Peregrine Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, commercialization and licensing of unique technologies for the treatment of cancer.