Cassava says court dismisses criminal case against scientist

Cassava Sciences (NASDAQ:SAVA [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/SAVA]) shares rose as much as 6% premarket on Friday after a U.S. court dismissed [https://seekingalpha.com/filing/10556365]a criminal case against Hoau-Yan Wang, a former scientific collaborator and advisor who conducted foundational research relating to the company's investigational drug, Simufilam.

On October 23, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland granted the United States’ unopposed motion to dismiss with prejudice the criminal indictment against Wang. The order permanently terminates the case, and future charges related to the dismissed indictment cannot be refiled.

Wang was accused of submitting false information in grant applications to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and manipulating research results, including Western Blot images.

The charges stemmed from a Maryland grand jury indictment that accused Wang, a CUNY School of Medicine professor and paid consultant to Cassava, of falsifying data related to Cassava’s lead asset, simufilam, which was then being studied for Alzheimer's disease. The allegedly fabricated data was used to support applications for NIH grants, which resulted in Cassava receiving about $16 million in funding, according to the indictment.

The pharma firm announced plans to discontinue its research program for simufilam in Alzheimer’s disease by the end of the second quarter this year following a failure in a second late-stage trial for the oral small molecule. It has started preclinical studies for the drug in Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC)-related epilepsy and is continuing cost reduction efforts.

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