A LEADING scientist has written to the American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) drawing its attention to the sale of a parcel of Elan shares by Dennis Selkoe, a fellow scientist and director of the Athlone-based pharmaceuticals company.

Alexei Koudinov, a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and a long-time critic of Selkoe’s disclosure policies, said the SEC should look at Selkoe’s disposal of 2,800 Elan shares for $120,000 (€102,000), or $43.65 (€37.07) each. The sale in December 2001 occurred a month before the share price collapsed, largely as a result of Elan’s ill-fated, Selkoe- inspired programme of research into Alzheimer’s disease.

Koudinov has been a persistent critic of Selkoe’s theory that excess of amyloidal protein is a big contributory factor to Alzheimer’s.

Selkoe previously sold 20,000 shares for around $1m on February 6, 2001. Other insiders at Elan declared sales of more than $43.5m in the months following Selkoe’s disposal. After the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused to endorse the drug in January 2002, the share price fell to a low of $2.

Selkoe has denied any impropriety, pointing out that he still owns 163,000 shares in the company. “People investing in Elan, such as myself, lost 95% of their investment and had I any malfeasance in mind, I would have tried to protect myself in some way,” he said. “I can swear to the fact that I did not have any inside information.”

Selkoe added that the final patient in the Alzheimer’s research had not been fully enrolled in the FDA test on the day he sold his tranche of shares. The relatively small sale of options, he said, was entirely in keeping with ethical practice and was above reproach.

“I’ve lost on the value of my remaining stock like everybody else,” he said.

Selkoe says he expects the ongoing SEC investigation into Elan’s accountancy practices will find “fundamental errors” but would not conclude that the company had engaged in illegal practices.

“What happened to Elan does not need to be attributed to some bad guy who did us all dirty. So what if the shares fell 80% as a result of the trial, that’s too bad.

“The trial was doing everything right. It was enrolling people. It had a good hypothesis. The hypothesis has by no means been disproved.

“Only 6% — two out of 30 — had adverse reactions, but they also had great benefit, no one died and almost all of the patients improved. Many might take the risk of this medicine on the basis of a 6% negative reaction.”

Selkoe added that Elan’s problems were only “a little bit to do” with the failure of the FDA trial. The share price is still a fraction of what it was when Selkoe last sold his shares, with analysts waiting for further progress on the drug.

Selkoe, who is also a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, said Koudinov “should be attempting to disprove my hypothesis rather than criticising me with e-mails”.