A federal grand jury has indicted an embattled Alzheimer’s researcher for allegedly falsifying information to fraudulently receive $16 million in federal analysis funding from the Nationwide Institutes of Well being for the event of a controversial Alzheimer’s drug and diagnostic check.
Hoau-Yan Wang, 67, a medical professor on the Metropolis College of New York, was a paid collaborator with the Austin, Texas-based pharmaceutical firm Cassava Sciences. Wang’s analysis and publications supplied scientific underpinnings for Cassava’s Alzheimer’s remedy, Simufilam, which is now in Part III trials.
Simufilam is a small-molecule drug that Cassava claims can restore the construction and performance of a scaffolding protein within the mind of individuals with Alzheimer’s, resulting in slowed cognitive decline. However exterior researchers have lengthy expressed doubts and considerations concerning the analysis.
In 2023, Science journal obtained a 50-page report from an inner investigation at CUNY that seemed into 31 misconduct allegations made towards Wang in 2021. In keeping with the report, the investigating committee “discovered proof extremely suggestive of deliberate scientific misconduct by Wang for 14 of the 31 allegations,” the report states. The allegations largely centered round doctored and fabricated photos from Western blotting, an analytical approach used to separate and detect proteins. Nevertheless, the committee could not conclusively show the photographs had been falsified “as a result of failure of Dr. Wang to offer underlying, unique information or analysis data and the low high quality of the printed photos that needed to be examined of their place.”
In all, the investigation “revealed long-standing and egregious misconduct in information administration and document conserving by Dr. Wang,” and concluded that “the integrity of Dr. Wang’s work stays extremely questionable.” The committee additionally concluded that Cassava’s lead scientist on its Alzheimer’s illness program, Lindsay Burns, who was a frequent co-author with Wang, additionally probably bears some duty for the misconduct.
In March 2022, 5 of Wang’s articles printed within the journal PLOS One had been retracted over integrity considerations with photos within the papers. Different papers by Wang have additionally been retracted or had statements of concern connected to them. Additional, in September 2022, the Meals and Drug Administration performed an inspection of the analytical work and methods utilized by Wang to research blood and cerebrospinal fluid from sufferers in a simufilam trial. The investigation discovered a slew of egregious issues, which had been specified by a “damning” report obtained by Science.
Within the indictment final week, federal authorities had been express concerning the allegations, claiming that Wang falsified the outcomes of his scientific analysis to NIH “by, amongst different issues, manipulating information and pictures of Western blots to artificially add bands [which represent proteins], subtract bands, and alter their relative thickness and/or darkness, after which drawing conclusions” based mostly on these false outcomes.
Wang is charged with one depend of main fraud towards the USA, two counts of wire fraud, and one depend of false statements. If convicted, he faces a most penalty of 10 years in jail for the foremost fraud cost, 20 years in jail for every depend of wire fraud, and 5 years in jail for the depend of false statements, the Division of Justice mentioned in an announcement.
In an announcement posted to its web site, Cassava acknowledged Wang’s indictment, calling him a “former” scientific adviser. The corporate additionally mentioned that the grants central to the indictment had been “associated to the early growth phases of the Firm’s drug candidate and diagnostic check and the way these had been supposed to work.” Nevertheless, Cassava mentioned that Wang “had no involvement within the Firm’s Part 3 medical trials of simufilam.”
These ongoing trials, which some have referred to as to be halted, are estimated to incorporate over 1,800 sufferers throughout a number of international locations.