The Art & Science of Naming Drugs

In 1992, one momentous evening, Arlene Teck working on researching on naming of a legendary drug, asked a Urologist, what it feels like for men when the condition of erectile dysfunction went away.

The doctor said, "Visualize a strong stream."

Fusing the words "vigourous" and "Niagara," Teck came with "Viagra." Rest as we know is history. Arlene Teck is legendary in the industry for naming Viagra at Wood Worldwide.

Branding Drugs - the origins

Say it with me: Xeljanz. OK, at least try and say it with me.?Shell-jance??Zell-johns??Ghel-yahns? Who knows. It’s a new arthritis drug, and I have no idea how to pronounce it, but one thing is definitely clear: It could be worth billions for its maker, Pfizer.

So how are Drugs named? Drugs have at least three names the chemical compound, the generic name and the brand name. And coming up with these names, both a chemical name and its commercial brand, requires a drug name decoder. It’s somewhat like learning English words based on their roots: Once you know?bio?comes from the Greek for life, you know biosphere, biology, biography and so on have to do with that subject.Though pharmaceutical companies do not reveal their branding secrets, you can still derive a drug’s molecular and popular heritage just by studying its name. Like, for example, Tylenol. Its chemical name is N-acetyl-p-aminophenol–see the tyl and -ol in there?

Xeljanz, which was approved earlier in 2013 after almost 20 years of research, targets a protein called Janus kinase. It works in a different cellular pathway from other arthritis drugs. That’s where you get the?-jan?part of that name, which, to someone with a drug decoder, connotes its uniqueness.

Why is the naming process so tough?

Coming up with a proprietary name for a new pharmaceutical product is no easy task. It shouldn’t sound like that of another drug, according to health regulators, but with tens of thousands of pharmaceutical trademarks already on the books, it sometimes happens. Considering the other naming restrictions faced by drug companies — and the fact that, at last count, there were still only 26 letters in the alphabet — the challenge of coming up with a distinctive, memorable, snappy name becomes apparent.

“The general rules are: it can’t sound or look like another drug product, which might result in a misprescription, and that’s a safety issue; and the name can’t make any [medical] claims or be overly promotional,” says Scott Piergrossi, vice-president, creative, at the Brand Institute, a Florida-based company that has developed many brand names for drugs, including Levitra and Lipitor.

The name of a drug also can’t serve to broaden indication, minimize risk or misleadingly imply uniqueness or superiority. For example, the FDA rejected the name NovoRapid (a type of insulin) because it implied it was faster-acting than its competitors; the name was changed to NovoLog. A name can’t guarantee efficacy, either, which explains why the hair-regrowth product Rogaine couldn’t be sold under the name Regain. A name can even be rejected merely for being too fanciful.

Then there are market considerations. If you fork over a half-mil for a name, after all, you want it to appeal to consumers. Pharmaceutical companies tend to favour names that are easy to pronounce in many languages and don’t mean something offensive in another culture. They also try, despite all these restrictions, to use names that aren’t entirely meaningless.

“When you are dealing with pharmaceutical names, they are largely coined names, so invented names, and they often try to encode, within the guidelines of not making claims or being overly promotional, some kind of message, whether it’s aspirational or something that’s functional pertaining to the efficacy of the product,” says Piergrossi.

The name could, for instance, be associated with a positive word such as “victory” (the diabetes drug Victoza). It could be tied to a word implying what it does — “levitate” and Levitra (erectile dysfunction) — or when it is used: “lune” (French for “moon”) and Lunesta (insomnia).

The letters “X,” “Y” and “Z” often appear in brand names because they give a drug a high-tech, sciency sounding name (Xanax, Xyrem, Zosyn). Conversely, “H,” “J” and “W” are sometimes avoided because they are difficult to pronounce in some languages. Pharmaceutical products for women may include “S,” “M” or “L” to produce a softer sound (birth control pills Alesse, Yasmin, Seasonale).

Let us talk about the general rules when generic names are to be coined.

1. It must use two syllables in the prefix. This will help distinguish the drug from

others, and allows for more variety.

2. It must avoid certain letters. The generic drug name is created using the Roman alphabet, and the goal is to create a name that can be communicated globally. Because the letters Y, H, K, J, and W aren’t used in certain languages that use the Roman alphabet, they aren’t used in the creation of the prefix of the name.

3. It can’t be considered marketing. Using the company’s name within the drug’s

name must be avoided. Also, it’s important to stay away from superlatives or

laudatory terms (best, new, fastest, strongest) that could be considered

promotional.

4. It avoids medical terminology. You don’t want to imply that a drug is intended

only for one particular function, because in time, if it is also helpful for another

purpose, the name could be reductive. “Say you were developing a treatment for

oncology indications and you launched a product for those indications, but over

time in further research you discovered it worked on inflammation and immunology indications. If you had something like “Onc-” in the beginning of your generic name that would be very limiting,” say experts.

Branding is a creative process: Most agencies begin the process by playing the numbers game.

For any assignment, the Ixxéo (Branding Agency) team creates between 2,000 and 5,000 names. “That makes pharmaceutical naming different from consumer branding, where the constraints are not as stringent and where you can turn a much lower wheel of names,” said Ezingeard, who refers to himself as “Dr. Destructo.”

His job on the team is name elimination, because his primary concern is to “get out of the way” as many names as possible “that are by their nature” a possible liability. In the end, 10 are selected as “promising” from the original 2,000 or 3,000, and from there, the final selection of one name begins.

Concluding let's come back to Viagra. Now an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, Viagra is an example of how a name can “fundamentally create, not just change, conversation,” Interbrand’s Fidelino said.

“Prior to Viagra, impotence was a psychological disorder that went to the core of how men defined themselves,” he said. “By creating a brand that is named in a way that allows people to discuss it, and creating language or using language to describe the condition in a way that makes it easier for people to engage in conversation, you had more people seeking treatment and also improving sexual health and relationships around the world.”

Later, Interbrand was tasked with creating a moniker for what’s now known as Cialis, a second-to-market impotence drug.

He explains that the goal was to find a sound that fit with Cialis’ improvements over its predecessor, the macho-sounding Viagra. The resulting approach for Cialis was more about relationships and less about sex. “A different type of emotion is conveyed by Cialis,” rhapsodized Fidelino, noting that it’s a “tonally softer” name and more elegant.

You may read about the 2022 brand naming trends in my recent post here:

Ref.:

(i) Ever Wonder How Drugs Are Named? Read On - Pfizer; Wednesday, October 16, 2019.

(ii) How Do Drugs Get Named? HISTORY OF MEDICINE - Gail B. Karet, PhD; AMA Journal of Ethics? August 2019, Volume 21, Number 8: E686-696.

(iii) ‘Creation engineering’: The art and science of naming drugs; ?Susan Scutti, CNN.

(iv) Video courtesy: https://www.statnews.com/