CEL SCI CORP

Cel-Sci Corporation was founded in 1983 in Germany by Maximilian de Clara of Switzerland, who was also the president of the company until his resignation in 2016. Geert Kersten, de Clara's stepson, has been the company's CEO since 1995. The company went public in the year of its founding. The investment firm that took the company public later folded.

The company's United States research and development operations were based in Baltimore, Maryland in the mid-1990s.

In May 1992, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease and desist order against the company's then-President, Maximilian de Clara. This order stated that from August 1988 through June 1991, de Clara was 2–31 weeks late to file 16 forms documenting his sales of over $2.6 million of Cel-Sci stock.

CEO Geert Kersten confirmed that Cel-Sci paid an analyst from the brokerage firm of Honolulu Securities Inc. to write a research report on the company's stock, though the analyst claimed that being paid did not affect the conclusion that Cel-Sci's stock was undervalued.

In 1997, Cel-Sci bought a technology which enabled regulation of immune system responses that they had been licensing from the Dutch company Sittona.

Mysterious cash offer

The New York Times reported that in 1999, Cel-Sci received an unsolicited cash offer of $124 million from an unidentified person in Argentina.

Arbitration victory

In 2018, Cel-Sci won a 4.5-year-long arbitration suit filed in October 2013 against CRO InVentiv Health for breach of contract. The arbitrator awarded Cel-Sci $2.9 million in damages because the CRO failed to enroll the required number of patients over a period of 2 years, thus delaying the clinical development of Multikine. Later, the FDA lifted their clinical hold imposed on Cel-Sci in August 2017. This allowed the company to advance to Phase III of their head and neck cancer study.

2020 trading halt

On February 26, 2020, Cel-Sci's stock dropped 42.4% before a trading halt was issued for news pending. The company then released a letter to shareholders concerning the Phase III trial.

Multikine stage 3 study results

On June 28, 2021, Cel-Sci announced that the study missed its primary endpoint as the higher risk subgroup did not achieve a 10% improvement in overall survival even though the lower risk subgroup did. Kersten declared that the company would apply for FDA approval of the drug despite the study's missed endpoint. Following the announcement, Cel-Sci's stock lost between 40-50% of its value in one day as trading was halted at least 3 times.