Work’s got me looking at a lot of pharmaceutical stuff lately, which means I get to see lots of names for various compounds. Of course, brand names are just whatever seems catchy that’ll stick in your head, but I’m curious about the generic names.
Take, for example, the statins. They all end with -statin, with various prefixes: ceriva-, atorva-, rosuva-. My question is: is there any system to this, in the sense that there is to the IUPAC name? Could a chemist take anything from the name? I’m guessing not, but that leads to the next question–how DO they come up with these names, if they’re not systematic?
It is just semi-descriptive marketing. There is no better explanation than that as a general rule. There are lots of people that could guess the general class of drug by the ending. Almost anything that ends in ‘pam’ or ‘lam’ is a benzodiazepine for instance (e.g., Diazepam is the generic name for Valium, Estazolam is the generic name for ProSom). However, some benzodiazepines do not end in ‘pam’ or ‘lam’ (Chlordiazepoxide is marketed as Librium for instance). The same holds true for all classes of drugs. The generic drug name may or may not give some hint of what it does.
The non-generic versions use the same logic as car model names. They are usually just some combination of letters that sound pleasant, powerful or potent. What would you rather take after a great date night, Sildenafil or Viagra? They are the same thing. I am sure the marketing team for Viagra wanted a word for strength like Vigor to be combined with a pleasurable vision of a great wonder like Niagara Falls. They deny it but there is always a reason for picking between made up words which is what the trademarked drug names really are.
Such a generic name is technically a USAN (United States Adopted Name). They are assigned and regulated by the USAN Council, but the pharmaceutical company has input in the process. See the AMA’s page about it for more information. See also Wikipedia’s page on USAN
That is a good cite. I mentioned descriptive suffixes but there can be also be descriptive prefixes and embedded descriptive syllables within a given drug name. Still, none of it is completely scientific and uses marketing as much as science even for generic names. Even scientists like to add a little style and flair to their work wherever they can.
From the article:
“Current nomenclature practices involve the adoption of standardized syllables called “stems” that relate new chemical entities to existing drug families. Stems may be prefixes, suffixes, or infixes in the nonproprietary name. Each stem can emphasize a specific chemical structure type, a pharmacologic property, or a combination of these attributes. The recommended list of USAN stems[1] is updated regularly to keep pace to accommodate drugs with new chemical and pharmacologic properties.”
Interesting stuff. thanks all!
When I worked in pharma in the 90’s, marketing let all employees submit suggestions for names of drugs going into clinical trials. They offered a few guidelines such as “it’s a benzo so needs to end in-lam.” From subsequent emails, you could tell they got irritated at the number of bad puns/sexual innuendos and dirty jokes that were submitted. Eventually they stopped asking.
In recent years there has been a move to make the USAN name as miserable as possible. This is because you’ll market under a trade name, and you don’t want the product to develop an identity under some easy, catchy USAN name. The reason is that when it goes generic, you’ll have all these people who’ve been using the USAN name and now the generics will be able to make hay under the name everyone’s been using. But your trade name remains yours, and they can’t take that from you.
Not necessarily. The name Aspirin used to be owned by Bayer. Now every generic form of the drug uses the name aspirin.
Very strange case, that, and not related to brand management as I was discussing it.
Bayer lost it’s trade name (in the US) due to political fallout from the war.
In 1919, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States revoked trademark protection for the term “Aspirin” as a form of reparations imposed on Germany after the First World War.
This was an extraordinary act—that is, not in the ordinary operation of trademark law or pharmaceutical regulation. The countries enacted sui generis laws revoking Bayer A.G.'s trademark rights within those countries.
Today, “aspirin” is a generic term in about a dozen countries, but “Aspirin” remains a Bayer A.G. trademark is more than 80 other countries.