On June 28, 2024, Cassava Sciences, Inc. announced that a federal grand jury had indicted Hoau-Yan Wang for allegedly defrauding the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The company is based in Austin, Texas, and Wang, a tenured medical professor at a public university’s medical school and former science advisor to Cassava Sciences, is accused of engaging in illegal behavior to secure approximately $16 million in grants from the NIH between 2017 and 2021 for himself and the company. These grants were intended for research related to the early development phases of the company’s drug candidate and diagnostic test.
While working on these grants, Wang was not involved in the company’s Phase 3 clinical trials of simufilam, which is Cassava Sciences’ leading drug candidate for Alzheimer’s disease treatment. Despite this, he allegedly engaged in fraudulent activities to secure funding for his own projects.
For more information about this case or to contact the Chief Financial Officer of Cassava Sciences with any questions or concerns regarding this matter, please call Eric Schoen at (512) 501-2450 or email him at ESchoen@CassavaSciences.com.
