Ahead of Ohio’s November 3 gubernatorial election, Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton has trained her fire on Republican contender Vivek Ramaswamy, targeting his past involvement with an unsuccessful Alzheimer’s medication.
A prominent television advertisement released by Acton’s campaign highlights Norm Wernet III, a resident of Bexley, Ohio.
“Norm’s wife has Alzheimer’s,” Acton stated in a Sept. 21 social media post accompanying the spot.
In the video, Wernet expresses deep frustration: “What Vivek Ramaswamy did to families like ours is unforgiveable. He pushed an Alzheimer’s drug that he knew didn’t work. He made hundreds of millions of dollars scamming people like me.”
Before stepping into the political arena, Ramaswamy established the biopharmaceutical firm Roivant Sciences in 2014. Shortly after, he formed a subsidiary, Axovant Sciences, which purchased the compound intepirdine from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for $5 million in December of that year.
Originally evaluated as an add-on treatment to boost a memory-related brain chemical, intepirdine had generated underwhelming data during GSK’s initial evaluations. Following the acquisition, Axovant initiated a massive Phase 3 clinical trial involving upwards of 1,300 dementia patients. The outcome proved disappointing, showing no meaningful benefit compared to a placebo.
An examination of the drug’s timeline indicates that Ramaswamy had access to GSK’s largely negative trial results when he acquired the medication and mapped out further testing. He subsequently championed the drug’s promise in public remarks, drawing heavily on an unreleased, preliminary analysis that highlighted isolated positive indicators.
When pressed for proof backing Acton’s assertions, her team referenced Ramaswamy’s public advocacy for the medication alongside a research paper co-authored by his mother that re-evaluated GSK’s earlier findings. Ramaswamy’s campaign did not provide a statement when approached for comment.
The Background on Intepirdine at the Time of Acquisition
Prior to Axovant securing the rights, GSK carried out four Phase 2 evaluations of intepirdine among individuals dealing with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s. (In standard drug development, Phase 2 tests involve larger cohorts than Phase 1 to measure efficacy.):
- A 2010 study featuring 371 participants indicated that higher dosages enhanced general functioning, though cognitive gains fell short of statistical significance.
- A 2011 trial of 198 people noted modest benefits when administered independently or alongside donepezil, a standard medication for dementia-related memory loss.
- A 2015 report detailed two broader studies carried out between 2008 and 2010. The first, tracking 576 individuals, observed no statistically relevant improvement over a placebo when intepirdine was used alone.
- The second evaluated 684 participants who were already taking donepezil. While these patients demonstrated measurable gains in certain metrics, the trial as a whole did not meet its primary success criteria.
Viewed collectively, GSK’s trials hinted at potential efficacy only when intepirdine was paired with donepezil, rather than acting as a standalone therapy.
Corporate disclosures confirm that Roivant obtained the original GSK trial datasets as part of the buyout transaction.
Ramaswamy’s Public Statements
As Axovant geared up for a 2015 public offering that valued the firm at $3 billion, Ramaswamy engaged in multiple media interviews discussing the treatment.
During a June 11, 2015, exchange with Forbes, he characterized it as “a great drug candidate” capable of delivering “a huge difference for a lot of patients” if cleared for use.
Speaking on CNBC on Oct. 6, 2015, he remarked: “We do know that that has an impact on improving cognition and function in these patients. We had a large study proving that a little bit ago.” However, his remarks omitted the nuance that the most favorable outcomes stemmed from patients combining intepirdine with donepezil rather than taking it by itself.
In that same appearance, he asserted that the product performed “statistically significantly better than the placebo.”
While Ramaswamy’s campaign did not clarify which specific trial he meant, a July 2015 evaluation co-authored by Dr. Geetha Ramaswamy—his mother and an Axovant staffer—offered an optimistic perspective.
Her research team revisited the 2008 and 2010 GSK data, publishing an abstract in the Alzheimer’s Association publication *Alzheimer’s & Dementia* which concluded that intepirdine was “well-tolerated and effective in improving cognition and function” when combined with donepezil, advocating for further investigation.
Because it was a conference abstract, the analysis lacked the depth of a full study. Kathy Liu, a University College London psychiatry expert specializing in dementia care, noted that conference summaries are rarely treated as conclusive proof of a drug’s efficacy.
Axovant subsequently advanced intepirdine to a Phase 3 trial—the definitive test for a pharmaceutical. The medicine failed to enhance patient cognition or daily living skills, leading Axovant to halt development in January 2018.
Financial Returns from Intepirdine
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) records confirm Ramaswamy served as Axovant’s principal executive and board member starting in March 2015.
Having previously worked at QVT Financial before launching Roivant, Ramaswamy divested portions of his Roivant holdings to Viking Global Investors, with tax filings indicating substantial earnings from stock sales during that timeframe.
Axovant’s June 2015 initial public offering generated $362.2 million by offering 24.15 million shares at $15 each. However, public documentation does not clearly isolate how much of Ramaswamy’s personal income was directly tied to intepirdine versus his broader corporate holdings.
When Axovant announced the Phase 3 setback in September 2017, the company’s stock valuation crashed permanently.
Proxy filings from 2017 indicate Roivant Sciences—where Ramaswamy remained CEO until 2021—held a 69.8% stake in Axovant, whereas Ramaswamy’s direct personal stake stayed below 1%. Consequently, his primary financial exposure came through Roivant rather than individual share ownership.
Regulatory paperwork shows Axovant recorded $36.7 million in stock-based compensation for Ramaswamy in fiscal 2016, alongside smaller remuneration figures tied to Roivant agreements.
Following the abandonment of the drug, the enterprise pivoted toward gene therapies, eventually transitioning into Axovant Gene Therapies in 2019 and Sio Gene Therapies in 2020.
Addressing the drug’s collapse in a June 2023 interview with The New York Times, Ramaswamy noted: “On a personal level, it grates on me a little bit. The business model of Roivant was to see these drugs through the market, and we could have cashed out big, and employees could have cashed up big, but that was not the business model.”
Dr. David P. Weber, a forensic accounting professor and former lead investigator for the SEC, emphasized that labels like “scam” or “pump and dump”—a term Acton also used in August—mischaracterize the situation based on available data. The SEC defines a pump-and-dump scheme as the illegal dissemination of false information to artificially inflate stock values before insiders sell off shares at a profit. Ramaswamy has faced no criminal charges regarding such activity.
“A failed bet is not fraud,” Weber observed, highlighting the historically high failure rate inherent in Alzheimer’s research.
Weber pointed out that investing heavily in a rigorous Phase 3 trial contradicts the notion that leadership anticipated failure from the outset, adding that an unsuccessful clinical trial does not automatically equate to fraudulent behavior.
Conclusion
Acton’s campaign asserts that Ramaswamy “pushed an Alzheimer’s drug that he knew didn’t work” to amass a fortune through deception.
While intepirdine underwent extensive prior testing—with three of GSK’s four Phase 2 trials yielding mixed or negative outcomes and a fourth showing promise primarily when combined with donepezil—Ramaswamy promoted the compound enthusiastically ahead of his company’s public debut without fully underscoring the limitations of those earlier studies.
Ultimately, a large-scale Phase 3 evaluation failed to substantiate the drug’s benefits, triggering a permanent collapse in stock value and the termination of the project by 2018.
However, financial experts note that available evidence does not substantiate the claim that Ramaswamy intentionally defrauded investors or that he personally cleared “hundreds of millions” directly from the failed product. SEC documents do not definitively track cash liquidations or isolate intepirdine-specific earnings from his broader biotech portfolio. Consequently, this claim is rated Mostly False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.