Taxol is a natural product isolated from the Pacific Yew, Taxus brevifolia. The compound was isolated from the bark of that tree by Monroe Wall of the Research Triangle Institute in the 1960s. He and his colleagues were guided in their work by the discovery of in vitro activity against L1210 cancer cells.
As is customary, the individual who discovers a new natural product gets to name that compound. Wall thus naturally called this new anticancer agent taxol (tax from taxus, ol as in alcohol, small T). He used the name in his 1971 publication announcing the chemical structure.
After that, chemists working with the compound used this name, partly because its very complex structure virtually precluded using the systematic chemical name.
Probably because it was so hard to obtain it in quantity, the compound lay fallow on a shelf at NCI until the late 1980s. Interest was revived when Susan Howrwitz discovered that the drug acted by a previously unknown mechanism: in essence it freezes cell division mid-stream by stabilizing the microtubules that should wither after pulling appart the pieces of the cells-to-be. The late Matt Suffness at NCI then made a concerted effort to pursue the compound. As part of this, NCI apparently requested bids from the private sector to join in developing taxol as an antitumour drug. This was to be one of the first such joint efforts known by the acronym CRADA (Cooperative Research And Development Agreement). The proposal tendered by Bristol Myers was deemed to be superior to the others leading to the company being awarded the agreement. The rest as they say, is history.
Somewhere along the line, however, someone either forgot to register the name taxol with the USAN as the non-proprietary name for that substance or may simply have been unaware of this requiremnent. This left the door open for Bristol Meyers to acquire Taxol as a trade name allegedly via the purchase of the TradeMark of an old laxative product and to have the non-proprietary name paclitaxel accepted as the generic term of Taxol. This meant that chemists would no longer be allowed to talk of taxol generically but would have to refer to paclitaxel, unless they were talking about BM’s drug in which case that would be Taxol, with a capital T.
So what of this laxative? It was apparently produced by Continental Laboratories Ltd of London in tablet form for the physiological treatment of constipation.