VIENNA, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE American: CVM) today announced the appointment of Mario Gobbo to its Board of Directors.
Mr. Gobbo has nearly 40 years of banking and corporate finance experience in healthcare and energy. His expertise encompasses venture capital and private equity as well as investment banking and strategic advisory services. He has served as an officer or director for a number of companies including several biotech companies: Xcovery, Ocimum/Genelogic and Helix BioPharma. Prior to that, Mr. Gobbo worked in the financial industry for Lazard LLC, Swiss Bank Corporation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Natixis Bleichroeder, Inc., and International Finance Corporation (the private sector arm of the World Bank). Mr. Gobbo holds a Bachelor of Arts in Organic Chemistry from Harvard College, a Master of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Colorado and an MBA, a Master of Business Economics and a PhD (Management) from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Mr. Gobbo has a unique background where science and Wall Street interact to create new medicines. He has backed many successful healthcare ventures and he has excellent contacts in that part of finance that is interested in building medical breakthroughs into great companies. We are honored to receive his help in bringing Multikine to market as a treatment for head and neck cancer,” stated CEL-SCI CEO Geert Kersten.
Mr. Gobbo commented, “This is an exciting and extremely important moment to join the board of CEL-SCI as it is on the brink of developing a product that will revolutionize certain head and neck cancer therapies and probably other deadly cancers. I am proud and honored to become part of the CEL-SCI team.”
About CEL-SCI Corporation
CEL-SCI believes that boosting a patient’s immune system while it is still intact should provide the greatest possible impact on survival. Multikine* (Leukocyte Interleukin, Injection) is designed to help the immune system “target” the tumor at a time when the immune system is still relatively intact and thereby thought to be better able to mount an attack on the tumor. In a Phase 3 study, CEL-SCI studied patients who were newly diagnosed with locally advanced primary squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (oral cavity and soft-palate) with the investigational product Multikine administered first, before they received the standard of care, which involved surgery followed by either radiation or chemoradiation. The Phase 3 study enrolled 928 patients. Our approach is unique because most other cancer immunotherapies are administered only after conventional therapies have been tried and/or failed.
After analyzing data from the Phase 3 study, we have better defined the target head and neck cancer population for Multikine, which is advanced primary head and neck cancer patients with no lymph node involvement and with low PD-L1 tumor expression. In the Phase 3 study, we observed statistically significant survival data in the final target population, showing that Multikine cut the risk of death in half at five years vs control.
Multikine (Leukocyte Interleukin, Injection) received Orphan Drug designation from the FDA for neoadjuvant therapy in patients with squamous cell carcinoma (cancer) of the head and neck.
The Company has operations in Vienna, Virginia, and near/in Baltimore, Maryland.
