Isis Pharmaceuticals initially balked at changing its name despite the rise of ISIS – a group also referred to as ISIL, the Islamic State or more recently Daesh – past year.
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When it was founded 27 years ago, the drugmaker was named after Egyptian healing goddess Isis.
Islamic State, commonly known as Isis, IS and Daesh, have claimed responsibility for several violent attacks around the world, including the gun and bomb massacres in Paris last month.
Ionis will begin trading under a new ticker “IONS” on December 22.
It comes after a sustained campaign of more than a year in which the company denied that it needed a name change at all.
In the past Isis Pharma didn’t think the name was a problem because it doesn’t sell directly to consumers and institutional investors hadn’t expressed concerns. “Before we changed the name, we had a lot of people taking pics and coming to harass me”, says owner Charlene Tse to the New York Post, “they said, ‘You have no shame!” It’s not clear if that selloff was linked to the attacks.
“Smart of them what took Crooke so long?” In early trade on Friday, shares of the company were little-changed.
“Our goal is to create medicines that will save patients’ lives, and we are proud to be at the forefront of creating innovative medicines”, CEO Lynne Parshall said in a statement.
Isis Innovation, the technology commercialisation company of Oxford university, has also stood firm.
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Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc is engaged in antisense drug discovery and development, exploiting a novel drug discovery platform it created to generate a broad pipeline of first-in-class drugs.
