Sean Cole

Same section of the drugstore, two different ways of looking at it.

So, for example, there's Lunesta.

A drug that Scott's company named.

Ah, okay.

Very cool.

See what they're doing there?

Then there's other sources of little name building blocks.

They might grab a few letters from the generic name of the drug or the active ingredient.

For example, bupropion hydrochloride.

That's the active ingredient in the antidepressant Welbutrin.

And then sometimes the name is derived from the science of how the drug works.

Right.

A lot of cancer drugs are like that, Scott says, because the audience is really more the doctor than the patient in those cases.

That is what the drug is actually doing and to what part of you.

So there's this one drug called Imdeltra.

It's I-M-D-E-L-L-T-R-A.

I mean, everybody knows about that.

And if Scott Pierre Grossi sounds ever so slightly defensive about the name of Delta, it's because another drug namer I talked to did not agree with him.

Arlene is kind of a legend in pharmaceutical branding.

And once I learned a little bit about her and her background, I couldn't not reach out to her to get her perspective on how prescription drugs get their names.