Peregrine Pharmaceuticals has been awarded a grant totaling $585,000 to its collaborators at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas to conduct preclinical studies of Tarvacin Anti-Cancer as a potential treatment for prostate cancer. Tarvacin Anti-Cancer, Peregrine's lead vascular targeting antibody, is currently in a Phase I clinical trial for advanced refractory solid tumors.

In November, Peregrine received a major DOD prostate cancer grant to UT Southwestern researchers for preclinical studies of Tarvacin in combination with chemotherapy. With this new project, the total DOD commitment to Tarvacin prostate cancer research exceeds one million dollars. Altogether more than three million dollars in aggregate grant funding has been awarded to UT Southwestern researchers to study Tarvacin in anti-cancer and anti-viral applications.

"This second peer-reviewed Defense Department grant is another confirmation of the research community's growing interest in the therapeutic potential of Tarvacin Anti-Cancer," said Steven W. King, president and chief executive officer of Peregrine. "As we move to complete our first Phase l cancer trial later this year, we look forward to applying findings from these ongoing research efforts to advance later stage human studies of Tarvacin in a variety of solid tumor cancers."

In the new prostate cancer studies, UT Southwestern researchers will use several models of prostate cancer to focus on issues relevant to optimization of therapy, including dosing and scheduling, as well as how best to combine Tarvacin with chemotherapy to achieve synergistic therapeutic effects. They will assess the efficacy of Tarvacin Anti-Cancer against primary tumors and examine its impact on bone metastases. The results of these studies are expected to help guide the design of human prostate cancer studies for Tarvacin Anti-Cancer.