Eli Lilly's New Weight Loss Drug May Have the Worst Name in Pharmaceutical History

Image by Getty / Futurism Developments Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced promising clinical trial results this week for a daily pill to treat obesity and diabetes. Besides the good news of minimal side effects and impressive results, though, the pill has an extremely unfortunate quality: its name. The drug, which was first discovered by Chugai Pharmaceutical and licensed to Eli Lilly in 2018, is called "orforglipron," a word so perplexingly unpronounceable — "or fugly pron"? — that it defies belief. According to the company, it's pronounced "or-for-GLIP-ron," which is such a mouthful that it's nearly impossible to imagine it becoming a household name like "Ozempic." The pharmaceutical industry has a long and well-earned reputation for cooking up terrible names for drugs, from the anti-cancer medication "carfilzomib" to the melanoma treatment "talimogene laherparepvec" to "idarucizumab," which counteracts the blood-thinning effects of other medications. But there are seve ... Read full article.