Cassava Sciences

Cassava Sciences is an American pharmaceutical company based in Austin, Texas. The company was founded in 1998 by Remi Barbier as Pain Therapeutics, Inc., changing its name in 2019.

Cassava is developing simufilam (previously known as PTI-125 and sumifilam), an oral-tablet drug candidate for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease; simufilam is in phase III clinical trials as of 2022. 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.

Cassava (as Pain Therapeutics) initially worked on three drugs: the pain drugs Oxytrex and Remoxy, and PTI-901, which aimed to treat irritable bowel syndrome. The company had no drug approved as of 2021, and no product revenues between 2013 and 2021; with 25 employees, the company's stock was the sixth-best performing in 2021 before falling after concerns over simufilam research. Provided by Wikipedia