Cassava Sciences
Cassava Sciences (symbol: SAVA) is a pharmaceutical company based in Austin, Texas, USA. Established in 1998 as Pain Therapeutics, the new name was adopted to focus on drugs for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease. Its founder, Chief Executive Officer and President, Remi Barbier, was inspired by research on the actions of opiate conducted at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the early 1990s. The major initial works were on the painkiller Oxytrex (oxycodone combined with naltrexone), an antiabuse opioid Remoxy (modified oxycodone) and PTI-901 (modified naltrexone for irritable bowel syndrome). None of the drugs were approved  by the Food and Drug Administration. Remoxy, as the most promising prescription drug among them, was turned down by FDA for the fourth time in 2018 due to high potential risks. SavaDx (originally known as PTI-125Dx), a blood-test kit, and simufilam (earlier called PTI-125 and sumifilam), an oral-tablet drug for Alzheimer's disease, are the two most important products. Simufilam has undergone Phase I clinical trials since 2018 with good results, and the final stages of Phase II and Phase III trials started in 2022. The drug made the company the sixth-best performing US stock in 2021 . Cassava Sciences has no laboratory of its own. The main research works are done by its Senior Vice President Lindsay Burns in collaboration with Hoau-Yan Wang, an Associate Medical Professor at the City University of New York, who serves as the company's scientific advisor. While simufilam was being assessed by the FDA for approval, scientific controversies arose in 2021 on the research papers that described the discovery and development of the drug as there were evidently manipulated data. The situation led to a steep fall in the stock price of the company. Five papers related to Wang's  research under Cassava Sciences published in "PLOS One" were retracted in 2022. History. The establishment of Cassava Sciences (as Pain Therapeutics) was originally inspired by the development of painkillers naloxone and naltrexone, which are opioid antagonists, as medications for alcohol or drug use disorders. Remi Barbier first heard of the research led by Stanley M. Crain at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City around 1993. Since the 1980s, Crain's team had been investigating the effect of these drugs as a powerful painkiller for substance (such as morphine and cocaine) use disorders. In 1995, Crain and  Ke-Fei Shen found that an extremely low (picomolar) concentrations of naloxone and naltrexone showed better painkilling and reduced morphine dependence in experimental mice. Crain invited Barbier to his lab and explained the potential pharmaceutical and financial benefits. In 1998, Barbier started the Pain Therapeutics in Austin, Texas, with an initial investment of one million dollars. The first drugs. The company started with three drug candidates: Oxytrex, Remoxy and PTI-901 (which is a modified naltrexone for irritable bowel syndrome). Oxytrex is a mixture of oxycodone, a generic opioid medication, combined with ultra-low dose of naltrexone, aimed to reduce pain  in substance withdrawal symptoms. An initial clinical trial gave a good overall result, to which Barbier remarked: "the drug really worked as intended." But the Phase III trial failed, the results of which caused share value of the company down by 19% the next day. Remoxy is a modified oxycodone that was meant to be long acting and prevent drug dependence. The clinical trials started in 2006. The FDA declined to approve the drug for the fourth time in 2018 due to high potential risks. The company faced 36% loss in its shares. Simufilam and new name. In 2008, Lindsay  Burns (later Senior Vice President and wife of Barbier), working with Hoau-Yan Wang and his student Maya Frankfurt of the City University of New York, found that there was a small molecule (a 300-kDa protein) that acted as an opioid antagonist along with naloxone and was possibly able to prevent drug dependence. The research was funded by Pain Therapeutics and the discovery was published in "PLOS One". In 2010, Burns and Wang reported the chemical compound as PTI-609 (PTI for Pain Therapeutics, Inc.). In 2012, Burns and Wang's team reintroduced the compound as PTI-125, "a novel compound , in The Journal of Neuroscience", where they showed the molecule as binding to filamin A, a key protein that maintains cell shape and division. This had important implication in neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease in which filamin A is distorted. In 2017, they experimentally demonstrated in mice that the compound binds to filamin A and restored it to its normal structure, as they reported in "Neurobiology of Aging". Several drugs have been investigated for Alzheimer's disease, but most of them failed or even did not make it to clinical trials as they are often toxic to normal  cells. In 2018, having a new drug candidate, Pain Therapeutics received research grants ($260,585) from the National Institutes of Health for the clinical trials of PTI-125 as an Alzheimer drug. With this new focus, a different name Cassava Sciences, Inc., with the symbol SAVA, was adopted in 2019. Record in the NIH Clinical Trials registry in 2019 indicates the name of the drug as simufilam. The company reported in 2020 that the initial clinical trials failed. However, subsequent reports showed good results, and Barbier claimed it as "the first drug—to our knowledge—that can restore cognition." By then  Wang had become science advisor to the company. Announcing the Phase II results and future Phase III in February 2021, Barbier contended: "I believe the rest of the year may be equally exciting." Simufilam and issues of research misconducts. In August 2021, the Food and Drug Administration received a citizen petition expressing concerns of unreliable research and misuse of scientific data on simufilam. Submitted by Jordan A. Thomas of the law firm Labaton Sucharow in New York City, the letter requests for halting the clinical trials and resolving important issue, such as: Cassava Sciences publicly responded that each claim was  false and misleading. It maintained that the research data were genuine, as Barbier announced, "As a science company, we champion facts that can be evaluated and verified." It initially claimed that some data were in clinical trials were produced by their partner Quanterix Corporation, to which the latter made an open statement saying: "Quanterix or its employees did not interpret the test results or prepare the data charts presented by Cassava." In November 2021, "The" "Wall Street Journal" revealed the lead scientific whistleblower as David Bredt, a neuroscientists at Johnson & Johnson. Bredt had noticed Cassava Sciences when its stock share  increased in the early 2021 when Simufilam became a promising drug. He was immediately concerned with the experimental method in the clinical trials that did not use placebos. After examining all the related research papers, he remarked, "They were making statements that were incompatible with biology and with pharmacology," and said that the research was worth to "win five Nobel Prizes." He decided to team up with Geoffrey Pitt, a cardiologist and a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, and approached Thomas. Patrizia Cavazzoni, Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, responded in February 2022 rejecting the petition  on the ground that the requested actions will need public disclosure of research materials which FDA is obligated to keep confidentiality on. The letter concludes:We take the issues you raise seriously. Please note that your Petitions are being denied solely on the grounds that your requests are not the appropriate subject of a citizen petition. This response does not represent a decision by the Agency to take or refrain from taking any action relating to the subject matter of your Petitions.The link between filamin A is and Alzheimer's disease is still doubtful, as Lawrence Sterling Honig, professor  of neurology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, noted: "But in fact, all the evidence seems to be from this [Wang's] lab." The placebo effect, a beneficial non-drug treatment, is important in clinical trials as it can have beneficial influence on the treated patients as the drugs, particularly in brain research. Robert Howard, professor of psychiatry at the University College London, remarked on the lack of placebo and small sample size that making such research conclusion "at the very least is implausible." Thomas C. Südhof, Nobel laureate neuroscientist at Stanford University, also commented: "The overall conclusions with regard  to Alzheimer’s disease make no sense to me whatsoever... [The findings of Cassava Sciences] are not in the mainstream of the field, and to me they seem implausible and contrived." Cassava Sciences announced the start of Phase III trials in December 2021. The first phase would require 750 participants, and the second, 1000. It is not clear if the study will be completed as people seem to be reluctant for participating due to the prevailing controversies. As of April 2022, only 60 people were enrolled in the study. Reactions from the journals. Following the public controversies, "The Journal of  Neuroscience" reassessed the paper in 2012 describing simufilam binding to filamin A, Marina R. Picciotto, the editor-in-chief, declared in November 2021 there were no evidence of data manipulation after the original data from the authors were examined; however, noted that some images were duplicated in the same paper. The authors published the correction along with the original images in December 2021 remarking that the "error does not affect the conclusions of the article." However, the original images created further inconsistency on the overall data, and the journal issued an expression of concern on 19 January 2022:The editors  have been made aware of concerns about Western blots in this study, including those published with the article's erratum (Wang "et al.", 2021). These and other concerns are currently under investigation by the academic authorities at the City University of New York (CUNY). "JNeurosci" will await the outcome of that investigation before taking further action."PLOS One" re-examined all the Burns and Wang's research papers in March 2020 and found manipulations in the western blot data. Five of Wang's papers were retracted, out of which two were co-authored with Burns, including the original discovery paper  in 2008, the retraction note of which reads:The data and comments provided did not resolve the concerns about the integrity and reliability of data presented in this article. In light of these issues, the "PLOS ONE" Editors retract this article. HYW [Hoau-Yan Wang] and LB [Lindsay Burns] did not agree with the retraction. MF [Maya Frankfurt] either did not respond directly or could not be reached. HYW stands by the article’s findings."Neurobiology of Aging" also issued an expression of concern on the 2017 paper, saying that although there were no "compelling evidence of data manipulation intended  to misrepresent the results," they found at least eight errors in different parts of the result. The journal concludes:The authors have requested a corrigendum to correct these issues. However, "Neurobiology of Aging" is aware of an ongoing inquiry of these and other concerns by the sponsoring institution, the City University of New York (CUNY), and will make a final decision as to appropriate corrective action once that inquiry has been concluded.