Sparkyone, The reason they couldn't do an ADHD trial instead of SA was that the required longer term preclinical tests on CX-1739 weren't performed yet (dosing for ADHD is for 3 or 4 weeks, vrs a single day dose for SA, so ADHD required considerably more preclinical work than SA).
Having already shown respiratory efficacy in RD, they figured they'd build on that with some quick SA data, while concurrently doing the additional preclinical work required for ADHD. But as we know, the SA trial took forever, money ran out, they had to impose severe austerity, etc. So it was a miscalculation, though the overall strategy seemed logical at the time.