Firms Play Games With Names

What’s in a name?

For some biotech companies, it’s a clever play on scientific lexicon that telegraphs a sense of high-tech sophistication, of state-of-the-art something or other.

For others, it’s high-tech baloney.

Consider, for instance, the origin of the name Quidel Pharmaceuticals.

“I wanted something that was two syllables, phonetically pleasing, unrelated to any identifiable proper name and no obvious tie to high-tech biology, like gene or bio or immune or engineering ,” said Dr. David Katz, who founded the company to develop pregnancy and Strepp throat detection kits.

He invited friends to brainstorm, and, an hour later, a buddy from Boston called back with the proposal for Quidel. “I asked him, ‘What does it mean?’ And he said, ‘Nothing.’ And he pointed out that you can do nice things with Qs in logos.”

After Katz adopted the name, his friend sent him a plaque with the name Quidel, and the notation that, in Chinese, qui de means “to advance quickly.”

Other biotech companies have names that more directly reflect the focus of their scientific mission.

Ligand Pharmaceuticals and Amylin Corp. are named after hormone molecules.

Cytel is rooted on the Greek word for cell, with “tel” added “because it has a techy sound to it,” said company officer Jeryl Hilleman.

Mycogen, which makes biologically based pesticides, connects the word mycology --or the study of non-green, non-vascular plants such as fungi and algae--with genetics .

Telios Pharmaceuticals takes its name from the Greek word teleos , meaning “perfect” or “complete,” because of the company’s mission to restore the body to health.

Viagene was named by the wife of one of the founding scientists, to reflect the basis of the new company’s proposed medicines--”by way of genes.”