← Every product built on public research
Takeda · Bortezomib
Velcade: invented in a government lab, then Medicare paid $312K for it in 2025
$312K
Medicare paid, 2025
before rebates
$38M
Medicare, 2020–2025
$21K per patient in 2025
$38K
Medicare, 2026 Q1
the newest quarter CMS has published
$2.9M
Medicaid paid, 2024
before rebates
The public record, link by link
1 · Public research
Invented in NIH labs and licensed to Millennium Pharmaceuticals.2 · Patent
Patents 6699835, 6713446, 6958319, 7109323, licensed by NIH.3 · FDA approval
Approved May 13, 2003, sold by Takeda (NDA 021602).4 · Public pays
Medicare paid $312K in 2025 for 15 patients; Medicaid paid $2.9M in 2024.
What Medicare paid for Velcade
Plus $38K in the first quarter of 2026.
The government license
NIH to Millennium Pharmaceuticals
A treatment for multiple myeloma that works by specifically inhibiting an enzyme complex known as the proteosome. Under an accelerated approval program, the FDA has allowed the use of Velcadein patients who have failed two prior therapies. The selectivity and manageable side-effect profile of this boronic dipeptide compound makes it an exciting new cancer drug. NIH researchers made a critical contribution by developing stable, pharmaceutically acceptable compositions of these important compounds. Indeed, as the first proteosome inhibitor to be approved by the FDA, Velcadeopens the door for a new class of useful drugs.
First sold 2003. Licensed patents: US 6699835, US 6713446, US 6958319, US 7109323. See the list
Takeda'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. Separately, Takeda received $15M in federal contracts and grants since fiscal 2020, which includes purchases. Takeda's page shows its other products on this list, its federal awards, its PAC's giving and its lobbying. If Takeda 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.