CEL-SCI Corporation Announces Data Showing Cancer Drug Multikine Lowers Cholesterol in Clinical Studies

CEL-SCI Corporation CVM announced today data from its Phase II clinical studies which showed that its lead drug Multikine was able to lower cholesterol in studies involving 120 head and neck cancer patients. The studies were primarily designed to determine the safety and efficacy of the drug in head and neck cancer patients. However, a meta-analysis of the pooled clinical data from the four clinical trials showed the reduction of total cholesterol following treatment with Multikine to be highly statistically significant (p<0.0001). This result was achieved without affecting the levels of AST/ALT (liver enzymes) or having any other severe adverse effects related to Multikine in these patients. Unlike the liver toxicity seen with the widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins (e.g. Lipitor, Zocor, Mevacor), patients undergoing treatment with Multikine showed no liver toxicity while achieving reduction in total cholesterol levels. Most of the patients were treated with Multikine for 2 or 3 weeks, but some of them were treated for up to 24 weeks. A meta-analysis is a statistical procedure to combine a number of existing studies. Through such a procedure, effects which are hard or impossible to discern in the original smaller studies can be made visible as the meta-analysis is, in the ideal case, equivalent to a single study with the combined size of all the original studies.