Filana Therapeutics

Filana Therapeutics, Inc. (formerly Cassava Sciences, Inc.) is an American pharmaceutical company based in Austin, Texas. The company was developing simufilam (previously known as PTI-125 and sumifilam), 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 (DOJ) charged an advisor to company, 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 the company's senior vice president and Wang's co-author. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed fraud charges in September 2024 against Barbier, Burns and Wang. The parties did not admit wrongdoing, but agreed to pay fines of the company $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.

Filana Therapeutics was founded in 1998 by Remi Barbier as Pain Therapeutics, Inc., changing its name in 2019 to Cassava Sciences. The company 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. On March 10, 2026, a new name Filana Therapeutics was adopted.