Why Are Drugs Getting Such Weird Brand Names?

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.

Scientific name	Brand Name	Disease	Company
telaprevir	Incivek	Hepatitis C	Vertex Pharmaceuticals
boceprevir	Victrelis	Hepatitis C	Merck
brentuximab vedotin	Adcetris	Hodgkin’s disease	Seattle Genetics
abiraterone	Zytiga	Prostate cancer	Johnson & Johnson
cabazitaxel	Jevtana	Prostate cancer	Sanofi-Aventis
belimumab	Benlysta	Lupus	Human Genome Sciences
denosumab	Prolia	Osteoporosis	Amgen
denosumab	Xgeva	Cancer-related bone fractures	Amgen
sipuleucel-T	Provenge	Prostate Cancer	Dendreon
gabapentin enacarbil	Horizant	Restless Legs Syndrome	Xenoport
gabapentin	Gralise	Postherpetic neuralgia	Depomed
peginterferon alfa-2b	Sylatron	Melanoma	Merck
ipilimumab	Yervoy	Metastatic melanoma	Bristol-Myers Squibb
ibuprofen and famotidine	Duexis	Osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis	Horizon Pharma
tocilizumab	Actemra	Rheumatoid arthritis	Roche
roflumilast	Daliresp	Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease	Forest Laboratories
vilazodone	Viibryd	Depression	Clinical Data
azilsartan medoxomil	Edarbi	Hypertension	Takeda Pharmaceuticals