Cassava Sciences (SAVA) announced on Thursday that the Fraud Section of the U.S. Department of Justice has closed an investigation into the company over allegations related to its research misconduct.
In July 2022, Reuters reported that the DoJ opened a criminal investigation into whether Austin, Texas-based Cassava (SAVA) manipulated research results for its experimental Alzheimer’s drug candidate, simufilam.
In 2024, a federal grand jury in Maryland indicted Hoau-Yan Wang, a company-paid consultant and CUNY School of Medicine professor, for fraudulently seeking NIH funds with falsified data related to simufilam.
The company said that the DOJ had dismissed the indictment with prejudice on Oct. 23.
Additionally, in September 2024, Cassava (SAVA) agreed to pay $40M to resolve allegations made by the SEC that the drug developer made misleading claims about Phase 2b trial data for simufilam in Alzheimer’s.
“The Company cooperated fully with both the DOJ and SEC investigations,” SAVA said, adding that “these outcomes end the investigations of the Company by the DOJ and SEC.”