What’s In A (Drug) Name?

A list of licensed biological products targeted to a variety of diseases is maintained in the Purple Book, a database regularly updated by the US FDA; the Orange Book is a list of approved non-biological pharmaceuticals.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation report from April 2022, 62% of adults in the US take prescription medications. Americans spent nearly $370 billion on prescription drugs in 2019. A 2018 study by Robin Feldman found that 78% of drugs associated with new patents were not new drugs, but existing ones, and that “[o]f the roughly 100 best-selling drugs, more than 70% had their protection extended at least once, with almost 50% having the protection cliff extended more than once.”

The names of these patented drugs are almost as overwhelming and confusing as their price tags. Did you ever wonder if there was any logic in how these medications are named? Before a brand name is established for a drug, a common name is established. The name is essentially a two-part structure, where the latter part indicates the function of the drug, and the first part is usually comprised of two syllables and might have very little to do with the (bio)chemistry/pharmacology related to the drug.

So, here is some potentially useful information to keep in your back pocket when dealing with the wild, wild world of therapeutic interventions for diseases…