August 2021 – Science Integrity Digest

Concerns about Marseille’s IHUMI/AMU papers – Part 2

This is part 2 of a series describing papers from the IHUMI/AMU institutions in Marseille, France, with potential problems. In Part 1, I listed papers with image concerns. In this follow-up I’ll focus on a set of papers that might have problems with human subjects research not having received proper ethical approval. The articles span a decade of research on homeless people in Marseille, and involve different studies and specimens — but all were run under just one IRB approval number.

Photo credit:
Jon Tyson @jontyson on Unsplash

Cassava Sciences: Of Posters and Spaghetti Plots

In a previous blog post, I took a look at Western blots in papers from the lab of Dr. Hoau-Yan Wang at City University of New York (CUNY), mostly related to Cassava Sciences (Nasdaq: $SAVA), its predecessor Pain Therapeutics INC, and its flagship Alzheimer’s Disease drug candidate Simufilam.

While those papers were mainly about the preclinical Simufilam data, here I will review a conference poster reporting on Phase 2 data obtained by Cassava Sciences.

Cassava Sciences: Of stocks and blots

A group of anonymous persons filed a Statement of Concern with the FDA regarding the integrity of research papers about Simufilam, an Alzheimer’s Disease treatment drug candidate developed by Cassava Sciences (Nasdaq: $SAVA). The petition raises concerns about Western blots and methodology. I took a look at the problematic photos included in the report, and agree with most of those concerns. I also found some additional problems.

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