More fun with words

I commented to a friend, as I did here in my last blog post, that the new drug I’ll be taking has a name I can’t begin to pronounce: Ipilimumab. My friend happens to be a doctor and he said, “The MABs are monoclonal antibodies.” That was a term I’d heard my doctor use, but it didn’t occur to me until he said it that the drug’s name incorporates an acronym.

I still don’t know how to pronounce Ipilimumab, but it comforts my brain to know that its derivation has some meaning, that it’s not simply marketing gibberish.