Behind potent drug names, a complex mix of ingredients

Looking behind the curtain at how drug names are born provides a window into a side of the drug industry that most people interact with but few understand, a process that is both art and science, and requires a delicate balance of regulatory, legal, and linguistic concerns.

“A name in the health care space, it can actually transform our relationship with medicine, with our disease, with our health,’’ said R. John Fidelino, executive director for creative at the health care division of Interbrand, a branding consultancy based in New York and London that created the name Prozac.

Fidelino cites the example of Prozac, an easy-to-pronounce, uplifting name that turned depression into a disease that people could talk about. Instead of getting a prescription for an unpronounceable drug that sounded like a chemical compound, people had a new word that had none of the negative associations that came with the disease, he said.

To get there, pharmaceutical companies and brand-name consultancies go through exercises that run the gamut from silly to serious. Name generation can draw on exercises that get creative juices flowing, such as “What animal would this cancer drug be, if it were an animal?’’ as well as in-the-field experiments to ensure that spelling errors or handwriting mistakes wouldn’t result in medication errors.

Pamela Stephenson, vice president of marketing for Incivek, said that much of the work stems from the need to come up with a distinct name that somehow personifies the character of the drug. Vertex decided its drug was a kind of hero: a strong drug that knocks out hepatitis C virus.

“We like the fact there’s a ‘c’ in the name - we wanted to relate it to hepatitis C,’’ Stephenson said. “The ‘k,’ the hard-sounding ending is a strong-sounding name… . The brand identity is what image does this conjure up in your mind when you think about [the drug]… . The ‘hero’ nature was this was such a breakthrough in its ability to clear the virus.’’