A scientist whose research has been at the centre of controversy over an Alzheimer’s drug candidate has been charged with fraud.
A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted Hoau-Yan Wang, a professor at the City College of New York, with falsifying data to obtain grants totaling about $16 million from the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Wang’s studies supported research into a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease and simufilam, a drug in advanced clinical trials. Simufilam’s maker, Cassava Sciences, a Texas-based pharmaceutical company, has said the drug improves cognition in Alzheimer’s patients.
Alzheimer’s disease affects about six million Americans (a number expected to double by 2050) and promising treatments are generating enormous excitement. Cassava shares rose after each round of reported results from its trials.
But some scientists had publicly disparaged the drug, saying its mechanism of action and supposed results were implausible. Some went further and accused the company and Dr. Wang, its scientific consultant, of manipulating the results. Several journals retracted or attached statements of concern to publications by Dr. Wang and a Cassava co-author.
After the indictment was announced on Friday, Cassava shares fell to their lowest price since October 2020.
Remi Barbier, founder and chief executive of Cassava, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in a statement posted on its website, the company said Dr. Wang’s work “was related to the early phases of development of the company’s drug candidate and diagnostic test.”
“Dr. Wang and his former faculty of medicine at a public university have had no involvement in the company’s Phase 3 clinical trials of simufilam,” the statement said.
A publicist for the company pointed to a September 2023 publication that he says provides “independent verification of the science.”
For months, the City University of New York, of which he is a member, conducted an investigation to gain access to Dr. Wang’s files. Ultimately, members of the investigative committee concluded that Dr. Wang had been “reckless” in failing to retain or provide original data, a violation that “amounts to significant research misconduct.”
Neither the university nor Dr. Wang immediately responded to requests for comment on the allegation.
According to the Justice Department, Dr. Wang is accused of falsifying data on grant applications spanning nearly eight years ending in April 2023. Some of the grants funded Dr. Wang’s salary and laboratory research at the university.
Federal prosecutors have charged Dr. Wang with multiple counts of fraud and false statements. If convicted, he faces a maximum prison sentence of 55 years.
The FBI’s Washington field office is investigating the case. The indictment was handed down in Maryland, where the NIH is based.
In an emailed statement, NIH spokesperson Renate Myles said the agency “does not review grant compliance reviews on specific funded awards, recipient institutions, or supported investigators.”
“However, the NIH takes research misconduct very seriously,” he said. “The NIH promptly and carefully reviews all allegations of research misconduct it receives.”
