NBC NEWS – A neuroscientist whose work helped pave the way for an Alzheimer’s drug candidate was indicted by a federal grand jury on Thursday on charges of fraud.
The indictment, announced Friday by the Justice Department, brings additional scrutiny to the work of Hoau-Yan Wang, who has had multiple studies retracted and faced an investigation by the City University of New York, his employer, that was later halted.
The charges in the indictment are related to the alleged fabrication of research images and data that Wang may have used to secure federal grants from the National Institutes of Health.
Wang, a medical professor at the City University of New York, collaborated with Cassava Sciences, a pharmaceutical company based in Austin, Texas, as it investigated an Alzheimer’s drug candidate called simufilam.
He was awarded some $16 million in grants for early-stage drug development in collaboration with Cassava, according to the indictment.
“The Chinese Communist Party runs all of this, and their goal is to denounce the West. They hate the West, they hate the U.S. … These are communists and this is what they believe.” – National security analyst Rebecca Grant
The indictment charges Wang with one count of fraud against the United States, two counts of wire fraud and one count of false statements.
It accuses Wang of manipulating or adding to images of Western blots, a laboratory method that researchers use to identify proteins, in order to bolster evidence and help secure grants.
The indictment also suggests that Wang may have lied to scientific journals to substantiate his research, which contributed to the early development of simufilam.
The drug is currently in a late-stage clinical trial, and some 735 patients had participated as of May 2024, according to a news release from Cassava last month.
Wang did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In 2023, he told The Wall Street Journal that a CUNY investigation made “no conclusive findings of data manipulation, consistent with what I’ve been saying for two years.”
Since about 1950, scientists of Chinese origin working in the US have faced suspicions or even charges of spying for China, including cases involving espionage or fraud. SOURCE: Chemical & Engineering News
Cassava said in a release on Friday that Wang had not participated in its most recent trial.
In a news release, the company said: “Wang’s work under these grants was related to the early development phases of the Company’s drug candidate and diagnostic test and how these were intended to work … ”
