Here's one you don't see every day.
Cel-Sci Corp. is currently conducting a world-wide Phase III clinical trial for its lead product, Multikine, an 'off the shelf' cancer immunotherapy that the company predicts will become a blockbuster first-line treatment for head and neck cancer.
Looking to see Multikine approved globally, the trial is being conducted in nine different countries, and it's expected that more than 800 patients will be tested before the trial is complete.
All that sounds about right for a company developing a promising cancer immunotherapy treatment, but get this - on Tuesday, Cel-Sci issued a press release announcing that Multikine might also lower cholesterol.
Yes, cancer immunotherapy believers, you read that right.
Multikine might lower cholesterol.
I'm a long-time investor in CVM and believe that Multikine has the potential to be a blockbuster if it's proven to work as effectively in Phase III as the company advertises it did in previous trials, but I'm not quite sure how to take this cholesterol news.
Are we to believe that this product is going to be marketed as a tool to lower cholesterol? That the manufacturing facility in Maryland, with a state-of-the-art cold-fill facility, was built to put another cholesterol drug on the market?
I'm going to reserve judgement on this one, but the fact that a company producing a potential cancer-treating blockbuster is talking about lowering cholesterol in the same breath has my Spidey Sense tingling just a little bit.
Let's stick to what's important and relevant right now - the rate of enrollment and expected trial completion dates.
If it turns out Multikine has other benefits later on down the road, then so be it.
But I'd be willing to bet that a patient with a cancerous tumor sitting inside his or her skull is not going to give a rat's ass about cholesterol levels at that point in time.
With the ease of popping a pill for cholesterol, I'm also hesitant to believe that Multikine could ever be marketed in the same light.
An investment in CVM is one based on the potential for Multikine to hit the market as a first-line treatment for head and neck cancer.
Period.
Again, not sure what to make of this release, but it makes me more nervous than not.
Disclosure: Long CVM.
