Four years on, the Cassava Sciences story ended Monday exactly as many knew it would — with the company’s experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease, simufilam, proving to be nothing more than a placebo in a large clinical trial.
The negative outcome is devastating for the nearly 2,000 participants in this study and a second study also shut down Monday. Clinical trials in Alzheimer’s fail all too frequently, but simufilam was built on falsified research and misleading efficacy claims. The drug should never have advanced this far.
It’s heartbreaking to consider the time — years, in many cases — that people with Alzheimer’s lost by participating in Cassava’s Phase 3 trials.
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