Peregrine Pharmaceuticals announced the appointment of Roger J. Lias, Ph.D., as the company’s new president and chief executive officer.  

Dr. Lias, who has more than 20 years of contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) management experience, currently sits on the Peregrine board of directors and serves as president of Avid Bioservices, Peregrine’s wholly-owned CDMO subsidiary.   As part of this transformation, Peregrine is actively implementing a multi-pronged strategic plan designed to diversify and broaden its customer base and project mix, expand and strengthen its CDMO service offerings, and drive increased growth and profitability.  Additionally, Peregrine is in the process of officially changing the company’s name to Avid Bioservices and adopting a new NASDAQ ticker symbol.  The company expects this process to be completed in early 2018.

“We believe that Roger is best equipped to lead Peregrine, including the completion of the company’s transition to a pure play CDMO operating under the Avid Bioservices name.  With the demand for biologics manufacturing exceeding the industry’s current capacity and expected to continue to grow in coming years, Roger and his team have worked aggressively to establish a strategic plan that we anticipate will allow the company to take advantage of this significant market opportunity.  The team has already made important progress implementing this plan and we look forward to their continued execution of the strategy to best position our CDMO business for success,” said Joseph Carleone, Ph.D., chairman of Peregrine.