Why Are Drugs Getting Such Weird Brand Names?

Luke Timmerman5/9/11Follow @ldtimmerman

Share and Comment

11 Comments Order a Reprint E-mail this Story

• Share on Twitter
• Share on Facebook


• Share on Linkedin
• Share on Google

(Page 2 of 2)

to a scientific audience that it was a hybrid compound with two ways of working, and that it looked and sounded like “vitality.” The part that made it sound like a hybrid is important to physicians who are used to seeing depression drugs that are pretty much all alike, while the “vitality” part sounds good to a patient who wants help with depression.

If you are Seattle Genetics, and selling a new drug for Hodgkin’s disease and other rare, deadly lymphoma, you don’t really need to appeal to the consumer masses. That’s partly why the company settled on “Adcetris” for its new drug. The thinking was that for physician/scientists, starting the name with the letters ADC would call to mind the drug’s scientific origins as an antibody drug conjugate. That’s a jargon term that Seattle Genetics has used for years to describe its technique of linking, or “conjugating” an antibody to a toxin that makes the drug more potent.

I’ve written about antibody drug conjugates for years, and personally didn’t get the ADC connection at first glance. And I joked with Bruce Seeley, Seattle Genetics’ executive vice president of commercial operations, that I accidentally typed “Adcentris” a couple times before I could get the spelling right. It didn’t seem to bug him—he said the team at Seattle Genetics is happy that the FDA agreed to allow “Adcetris” to stand.

“I’ve named quite a few products in my history, and it’s increasingly difficult to find an attractive name that doesn’t sound like something else, or have a patient safety issue associated with it,” Seeley says. “We’re very fortunate.”

I thought it would be fun to comb through a list of recent names of drugs that have been FDA approved, or newly coined by the manufacturers, to give you a chance to weigh in on which ones you like, and which ones you don’t. There are 18 new drugs listed in the chart below. Below the chart, you can vote on the best and worst names in the bunch. Of course, you’re also welcome to leave your comments at the bottom of this story, too. This is an entirely unscientific poll, but it seems like fun. Who knows, if this exercise uncovers some fun new facts or insights, I might even share the results in a future BioBeat column. That is, so long as all these drug names haven’t already put you to sleep.

Luke Timmerman is the National Biotech Editor of Xconomy. E-mail him at ltimmerman@xconomy.com Follow @ldtimmerman