← Every product built on public research
Bristol Myers Squibb · Paclitaxel
Taxol: invented in a government lab
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Medicare paid, 2025
before rebates
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Medicare, 2020–2025
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Medicare, 2026 Q1
the newest quarter CMS has published
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Medicaid paid, 2024
before rebates
The public record, link by link
1 · Public research
Invented in NIH labs and licensed to Bristol-Myers Squibb.2 · Patent
Patents 5496804, 5496846, 6150398, licensed by NIH.3 · FDA approval
Approved Dec 29, 1992, sold by Bristol Myers Squibb (NDA 020262).4 · Public pays
Not in the Medicare Part D or Part B files, or Medicaid's. It may be off the market, generic now, or paid for inside hospital stays.
The government license
NIH to Bristol-Myers Squibb
An improved method for administering Taxol(paclitaxel) has significantly improved the treatment of cancerous tumors, particularly advanced stage epithelial ovarian and breast cancers. Paclitaxel is a compound derived from the bark of the Western Yew tree.
First sold 1996. Licensed patents: US 5496804, US 5496846, US 6150398. See the list
Bristol Myers Squibb's side
Drug makers pay for the clinical trials that take a compound from the lab to FDA approval, and they pay royalties on licensed patents. Those terms are not public. Bristol Myers Squibb's page shows its other products on this list, its federal awards, its PAC's giving and its lobbying. If Bristol Myers Squibb wants to add its account, we will publish it here.
How this is built. A product is listed for one of two public records. Either NIH's Technology Transfer office lists it as an FDA-approved product built on a license from an NIH, CDC or FDA lab, or a patent the FDA lists for the drug was reported to NIH as an invention made with NIH grant money, as the Bayh-Dole Act requires. We then add what Medicare Part D, Part B and Medicaid paid for each product, and for each company, the federal grants and contracts it received, its PAC's donations and its lobbying.
What the numbers mean. Medicare and Medicaid figures are gross spending before the rebates drug makers pay back, which are confidential. Hospital-administered therapies such as CAR-T cell treatments are mostly paid under Medicare Part A and do not appear in these files. "NIH grants" is everything NIH paid on the grants a patent was reported under, from 1985 on; a grant usually paid for more than one invention, so it is not the cost of the drug. Federal contracts include purchases, such as vaccine doses, as well as research. Companies also paid for the clinical trials that took these products to approval. None of these figures shows that public money set a price or bought a decision.
Sources: NIH Technology Transfer: FDA-approved products licensed from NIH, CDC and FDA labs; NIH RePORTER patents reported under NIH grants (from iEdison); NIH RePORTER project funding; FDA Orange Book patent, exclusivity and product files; CMS Medicare Part D and Part B Spending by Drug (annual and quarterly); CMS Medicaid Spending by Drug; USAspending.gov federal grants and contracts. Updated 2026-11-06.