JAK Inhibition: What Does It Mean?

Neal Bhatia, MD, director of clinical dermatology at Therapeutics Clinical Research in San Diego, California, shares highlights from his session “JAK Inhibition: What It All Really Means,” at Winter Clinical Hawaii in Kohala Coast, Hawaii. Bhatia notes that it’s important for dermatologists to take a step back and truly understand the mechanisms of action of JAK inhibitors.

Transcript:

Neal Bhatia, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Neal Bhatia. I'm the director of clinical dermatology at Therapeutics Clinical Research in San Diego. And at the Winter Clinical conference coming up, I have a few talks, which it will be a lot of fun, a couple on JAK inhibitors and how they work, a couple on some new updates in both actinic keratosis and photodynamic therapy, and a small talk on precision medicine and its future. So, looking forward to not only getting to the islands, but also getting to see all our friends in person and being part of one of the best meetings of the year.

Kaitlyn Bader, Editor: Thank you so much for joining me today. I was hoping you could also give us some highlights from your first session at Winter Clinical, JAK Inhibition: What It All Really Means.

Bhatia: Yeah, it's an exciting time for JAK inhibitors, not only to just describe what JAK is or what it stands for, but also what the process of using JAK inhibitors are, and most importantly, finding the right patients for that class of drugs. We've had steroids and many different immunosuppressants and now the era of biologics is still upon us. As JAK inhibitors move forward, it's important for us to kind of take a step back, understand their mechanism, without bludgeoning us with too much science, just understanding how they work and how they're different from steroids. Because that's what's going to give us talking points to the patients and their families when they ask those difficult questions about how to treat their conditions, even more so is just getting us over the hump and kind of off the ledge a little bit on drugs that, you know, might seem scary at first, and you're reminding ourselves that black box warnings are not, you know, they're not law they're not. They're just guidelines on how to use drugs safely what to watch for, you know, the big five black box warnings that came with a class of drugs, unfortunately, were generated in patients who are a little bit more sick with rheumatoid arthritis and, you know, a lot of the new applications of dermatology we may be able to get past some of those fears and get patients a little bit better.

Transcript edited for clarity