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Herriot Tabuteau’s story is the kind of American success that politicians on the left like to pretend doesn’t exist: an immigrant from Haiti who used grit, education and private capital to build a company that takes on some of the hardest problems in medicine. He left clinical medicine for Wall Street, then leveraged that Wall Street savvy to found Axsome Therapeutics and steer it into a niche most companies avoid. His rise from a “broom closet” office to a multibillion-dollar enterprise is a reminder that free enterprise and personal responsibility still produce results when government handouts and identity politics are sidelined.
Axsome today trades with a market capitalization in the neighborhood of $6 billion and, by the company’s own account and reporting, has three marketed drugs and several more programs moving through development. That’s not small talk — it’s the outcome of targeted risk-taking, muscling through regulatory hurdles and executing clinical programs that many traditional biotechs outsource or never attempt. Investors and patients alike should take notice: this is private-sector problem-solving as it was meant to work.
The company’s commercial portfolio includes Auvelity for major depressive disorder and rights to Sunosi for narcolepsy, and in January 2025 the FDA approved Symbravo for acute migraine, which Axsome launched into pharmacies in June. Those approvals didn’t come from political favors or headline-grabbing subsidies — they came from trials, data and a team willing to push complex programs to completion. Patients with depression, narcolepsy and migraine deserve treatment options, and the marketplace has delivered choices because entrepreneurs like Tabuteau bet on them.
Yes, Axsome isn’t yet profitable on the ledger — it reported robust revenue growth, with roughly half a billion dollars in trailing revenue as it scales, alongside a reported net loss as it invests in growth — but that’s the playbook of a growth biotech, not a failing company. Tabuteau still holds meaningful equity, and management projects large potential peak sales if the pipeline succeeds, illustrating how shareholder risk can create enormous patient benefit. Conservatives should applaud entrepreneurs who put their own capital and reputations on the line to bring new therapies to market.
What’s striking is how Tabuteau deliberately avoided traditional venture capital early on and built a diversified pipeline to reduce single-program risk — a strategy born of discipline, not entitlement. That kind of restraint and long-term thinking is the opposite of the short-term, grant-and-grift mentality we see from big-government approaches that reward bureaucracy over results. If we want more breakthroughs, we should encourage and protect the private innovators who take these risks, not punish them with price controls and vanity regulations.
The road hasn’t been smooth — some late-stage results have been mixed and regulators demand rigorous evidence, especially for fragile populations like those with Alzheimer’s agitation — but those challenges are part of the scientific process, not a reason to vilify success. Washington would do well to remember that patients and families waiting for effective treatments benefit far more from policies that foster research, capital formation and entrepreneurship than from politicians posturing about “reforming” drug pricing. Support the innovators, trim the red tape, and let American ingenuity keep winning for patients and taxpayers alike.
