A Cassava Sciences collaborator and paid consultant has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of defrauding the National Institutes of Health in grant applications supporting the company’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday.
Hoau-Yan Wang, 67, a neuroscientist at the City University of New York, published key papers supporting the effectiveness of simufilam, an experimental Alzheimer’s therapy Cassava is now testing in late-stage clinical trials. But outside researchers, including a panel of CUNY investigators, have raised major questions about Wang’s work, arguing that his research supporting simufilam contains fabricated and falsified data, including extensive data manipulations. And in court documents filed on Thursday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, the Justice Department accused Wang of securing $16 million in NIH funding by submitting fraudulent grant applications on behalf of himself and Cassava.
“It was the purpose of the scheme for Wang to fraudulently obtain NIH funding to enrich himself through continued and future compensation by making materially false, fraudulent, and misleading statements to NIH relating to this scientific research,” the indictment states.
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