Cassava Sciences is an American pharmaceutical company based in Austin, Texas. The company was developing simufilam, an oral-tablet drug candidate for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Development of simufilam was discontinued in November 2024 after it failed to show clinical benefit in phase III clinical trials. In June 2024, the United States Department of Justice charged an advisor to Cassava Sciences, Hoau-Yan Wang, with fraud over research results related to the experimental drug. Less than a month later, the president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board, Remi Barbier, resigned along with Lindsay Burns, his wife, who was a Cassava senior vice president and Wang's co-author. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud charges in September 2024 against Cassava, Barbier, Burns and Wang. The parties did not admit wrongdoing, but agreed to pay fines of Cassava $40 million, Barbier $175,000, Burns $85,000, and Wang $50,000. The DOJ dropped the fraud charges against Wang shortly before trial was scheduled to begin in October 2025 without giving a reason. Cassava was founded in 1998 by Remi Barbier as Pain Therapeutics, Inc., changing its name in 2019. Wikipedia