4 ms·

Why do so many modern cancer drug names end with the letter B?

• IvyMike 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_nomenclature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_nomenclature, https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/867446_3 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/867446_3 TL;DR: -ab is related to antibody, -ib is related to inhibitors.
• agumonkey 9y ago
  these are immunotherapy drugs, ib means inhibitor and ab means antibody IIRC.
• pkaye 9y ago
  Drugs that end in mab are monoclonal anti-bodies. They are cloned copies of anti-bodies from various sources that target something in the body.
• mitchtbaum 9y ago
  Caution: etymologically-oriented answers generally miss important nominological / nymological / onomatological / onomastic foundations. This namespace is a "synthetic" social construction. It has interesting "quirks", "gotchas", and "zingers". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomastics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomastics https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/onomatology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/onomatology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nomen https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nomen https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-nym https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-nym http://messymatters.com/nominology/ http://messymatters.com/nominology/
• aviv 9y ago
  It's like .com domains. They're running out of good names. Ending with letter B is Big Pharma version of .io domains.