San Diego — Harbor BioSciences, a leading developer of a proprietary class of adrenal steroid hormones as novel pharmaceuticals, announced it has licensed the research and development and commercialization rights for three of its products, exclusively in the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong, to China State Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry (CIPI). Harbor BioSciences retains the rights to these products in the United States and the rest of the world, and CIPI will make available to the company all pre-clinical and clinical data it generates.

"The agreements with CIPI, the first of their kind for both parties, provide the opportunity to move all of our products forward through
development simultaneously without any financial support from Harbor BioSciences," explained James Frincke, PhD. president and CEO. "Furthermore, the agreements provide the opportunity for Harbor BioSciences to capture value for our research and development efforts completed to date, while retaining U.S. and other world-markets rights."

CIPI is a major supplier of both generic drugs and traditional Chinese medicines in China and Hong Kong. The three license agreements cover Harbor BioSciences compounds HE2000, HE3235 (Apoptone) and HE3286 (Triolex) for any clinical use in the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.

CIPI plans to develop the Harbor BioSciences compounds for major indications including diabetes, cancer, inflammation and infectious
diseases. A March 25, 2010 article in the New England Journal of Medicine disclosed that Type 2 diabetes has become a major health
problem in China and may be epidemic. The article indicates there are now 92.4 million people in China with diabetes and 148.2 million who
have pre-diabetes.

"We are very excited to be working with Harbor BioSciences," commented Yu Xiong, senior vice president of CIPI. "The compounds that we licensed from Harbor BioSciences, with their demonstrated safety profile and activity, are compatible with new health initiatives of our government. With our resources and extensive experience developing pharmaceuticals, CIPI has initiated dedicated project teams in order to develop each compound simultaneously and to commercialize them as quickly as possible."

Harbor BioSciences believes these are the first drug development agreements between a western pioneer drug company and a government-owned Chinese drug developer for pharmaceutical development to be conducted in the People’s Republic of China. CIPI, a low cost drug manufacturer, has agreed to supply the licensed products to Harbor BioSciences for use in clinical studies and sales outside of China and Hong Kong. Harbor BioSciences can also elect to distribute these compounds in countries that accept the State Food and Drug
Administration’s (SFDA) drug approval process.

SOURCE: 
Harbor BioSciences