Drug Name Tournament

Here's a kind of fun item for you Cancer Nerds: the website Fierce Pharma is holding a "drug name tournament" for the next few weeks.

Some background for you first. In the U.S., we are just beginning the period known as "March Madness." College basketball is a big deal to many people in this country, and this week, the NCAA tournament begins. This involves 64 basketball teams that will play each other to determine who the national champion is. (I know it's actually 68 teams, but we're not going to complicate this any more than necessary.) And there are actually two tournaments, one for men's teams and one for women's teams. You can find a decent explanation of it all here.

There are lots of opportunities to get into a "tournament pool" where you have to guess which teams will win in each round of the tournament, all the way to the national champion. There are "office pools" set up among people who work together, and lots of chances to play against strangers online. Participating involves "filling out a bracket," guessing the winner of every game before the first game has even started. Sometimes there is light gambling involved, with the participants putting up a little money and the winner getting all of it. 

It is notoriously difficult to guess every winner of every game in the tournament. This is because of the way the tournament is set up. It doesn't involve the best 64 teams in the country. Instead, some teams get in because they have won their conference or group, and so a few teams are very small and not well known, and no one expects them to win against bigger, better-known teams. But these small teams do occasionally win, bringing up lots of David vs Goliath comparisons. It can be fun to get into a pool, unless your teams lose early.

Because not everyone is basketball fan, there are also lots of alternate "March Madness" tournaments around at this time of year. Everything from best Beyonce songs to best characters from Pride and Prejudice. You're not guessing the winners of games; instead, you're guessing which choices you think will be the more popular in the bracket.

So back to Fierce Pharma. They are holding a "drug name tournament." Last year, they had a tournament where readers picked the best advertising campaigns from pharmaceutical companies. this year, they're going with drug names. They have chosen 64 drugs out of the 92 that were approved by the FDA in 2022 and 2023, and put them into a bracket, NCAA tournament-style.

Their goal isn't to have people choose the "best" drug, but rather to choose the best name. It's more about marketing than effectiveness (since that is Fierce Pharma's focus). In making choices, they'd also like participants to add what they think the drug name sounds like. Fierce Pharma has given their own example for each of the 64 names. (For instance, one of the drugs is Jesduvroq, which is meant to help with low red blood cell counts due to chronic kidney disease. They think Jesduvroq sounds like something you would say "when you hit your finger with a hammer, but it’s in front of your children so you’re trying not to swear.")

For me, as a Cancer Nerd, it all sounds kind of fun. Drug names are always a little strange, though with some very serious work behind them, and this tournament pokes some gentle fun at them. I like that.

And if you're wondering if any Follicular Lymphoma treatments made the cut -- YES! There are two of them.

The first is Lunsumio, the bispecific that is also known as Mosunetuzumab. Fierce Pharma says the name Lunsumio sounds like a Japanese wrestler.

The second is another bispecific, Columvi, also known as Glofitamab. This was approved by the FDA for Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma, though it includes DLBCL arising from transformed FL. (There are some additional clinical trials for FL going on as well.) Fierce Pharma says Columvi sounds like an ancient Roman detective. Slightly more creative than their Lunsumio comment.

So good luck to all of you participating in March Madness tournaments, whether it's for basketball or something else.  Let me know if you do well in the Fierce Pharma competition.