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Drug nomenclature


Drug nomenclature is the systematic naming of drugs, especially pharmaceutical drugs. Drugs, in the majority of circumstances, have 3 types of names: chemical names, the most important of which is the IUPAC name; generic or nonproprietary names, the most important of which are the International Nonproprietary Names (INNs); and trade names, which are brand names. Generic names for drugs are nowadays constructed out of affixes and stems that classify the drugs into different categories and also separate drugs within categories. A marketed drug might also have a company code or compound code.

The chemical names are the scientific names, based on the molecular structure of the drug. There are various systems of chemical nomenclature and thus various chemical names for any one substance. The most important is the IUPAC name. Chemical names are typically very long and too complex to be commonly used in referring to a drug. Sometimes, a company that is developing a drug might give the drug a company code, which is used to identify the drug while it is in development. For example, CDP870 is UCB’s company code for Cimzia. Many of these codes, although not all, have prefixes that correspond to the company name. Example: 1-(Isopropylamino)-3-(1-naphthyloxy) propan-2-ol (propranolol).

During development, the company will apply for regulatory approval of the drug by the relevant national regulatory agency (such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA]), and it will apply for a generic (nonproprietary) name for that country (such as the United States Adopted Name [USAN] or Japanese Accepted Name [JAN]). It will also apply for an International Nonproprietary Name (INN) through the World Health Organization (WHO). Nowadays the national nonproprietary names are usually the same as the INN. The generic names usually indicate via their stems what drug class the drug belongs to. For example, one can tell that aciclovir is an antiviral drug because its name ends in the -vir suffix.


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