Drug names are complicated things. For one, they must linguistically fulfill the role of being a shiny bauble for prescribers to be memorable enough to outshine competitors.
But they must also walk a fine regulatory line so as not to become a marketing puff (no “CurezAll” here), while still standing apart from the thousands upon thousands of other branded drug names that already exist.
“Naming drugs is getting harder and the list [of potential drug names] gets shorter as time goes on,” Kyle Jenne, Ionis’ EVP and chief global product strategy officer, said in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing. “There’s a lot of research that goes into it and a lot of complexity.”
But whilst a challenge, it’s still a creative and fun process, Jenne said. He should know, having helped work on Ionis’ Dawnzera (donidalorsen), this year’s FierceMadness Drug Name Tournament winner.
“When we do these names, we want to make sure that they are distinctive,” he explained.
“We also try and refer where we can to the disease state and the area of medicine that we’re working in. But it also needs to be simple and easy to recognize—a lot of these names are starting to get pretty complex. It’s good to be able to hear a name and then actually relate to it.”
It’s important to Jenne and Ionis that not just doctors but also patients are front and center when considering drug names. “We want to make sure that [consideration of the patient] comes through in the branding, as well as for the physicians prescribing it.”
All these elements came together for Dawnzera, a drug approved in August last year by the FDA as a prophylaxis to prevent attacks of hereditary angioedema (HAE).
Jenne said: “A ‘dawn’ of a new era; that element is clear from the name and when you think about the innovation of the product: the first RNA-targeted therapeutic available [in the HAE space]. Well, that’s genuinely a new offering, so we wanted that to come through.”
Dawnzera is also built on the clinical name donidalorsen. With clinical names existing long before branding comes into play, it’s becoming more common for wordplay here to come into the drug’s final name. The “Dawn” in Dawnzera is also linked to the “don” in the ingredient name, Jenne explains. “Internally, we have been calling it ‘dawny’ in short for donidalorsen.”
The drug, whilst a first in its class, was launched into a crowded general HAE market. Since 2008, the FDA has approved 11 treatments for the rare genetic condition, with three of the nods coming during the summer of ’25, including Ionis’ med.
Those other approvals were Ekterly, from the small biotech KalVista Pharmaceuticals, as well as for CSL, which scored a June ‘25 FDA nod for Andembry.
The two big drugs in this space include Takeda’s blockbuster standard-of-care Takhzyro and BioCryst Pharmaceuticals’ fast-rising oral challenger Orladeyo, underscoring the level of competition Dawnzera has when it comes to branding in this space.
This was Ionis’ second Drug Name Tournament win, coming after its 2024 victory with drug partner AstraZeneca for Wainua. Next year, FierceMadness will be challenging drug ads against each other, but in 2028, Ionis will hope to return with a potential new drug name to defend its title.