New and Upcoming Psoriasis Therapies with Jason Hawkes, MD

“These are going to be exciting therapies coming down the pipeline,” Jason Hawkes, MD, said during an interview with Dermatology Times at the Maui Derm NP+PA Fall Conference in Nashville.

Hawkes, co-owner, chief scientific officer, and investigator at the Oregon Medical Research Center in Portland, Oregon, presented on psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Hawke’s portion of the presentation focused on new and upcoming adult therapies, emphasizing the advancements in small molecules and biological agents.

During the presentation, titled “Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis Update 2024,” Hawkes was joined by Katharina Shaw, MD, and Melodie Young, MSN, ANP-c.

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Hawkes: Hi, I'm Dr. Jason Hawkes. I'm a medical dermatologist practicing with the Oregon Medical Research Center in Portland, Oregon. Happy to be here at Maui Derm!

Dermatology Times: What topics did you discuss during your psoriasis session at Maui Derm NP+PA Fall?

Hawkes: In my psoriasis session, we really talked about some of the new therapies for adult patients with psoriasis. Really things like TYK2 inhibitors or the new IL-23 receptor inhibitor and oral medication, which has been a big deal for us because we haven't had an oral medication for almost a decade. Now we have an oral medication blocking a very familiar pathway with IL-23, highly effective, very similar to maybe biologics blocking IL-12 and 23 or even some of the IL-23 blockers. This has been a great option for patients. It will be a good option as we seek approval in late stage with the TYK2 therapies very different from the traditional Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors, JAK1, 2, and 3. We're seeing high selectivity with TYK2, very good inhibition on IL-17 and IL-23. This gives people another option, which may also have relevance in other diseases like psoriatic arthritis or even systemic lupus erythematosus. These are some really interesting options coming down the pipeline, with regards to biologics. We've seen advancements with IL-36 inhibitors now being approved for generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP), both IV and subcutaneous injections. This extends our ability to control patients, not only during acute flares with GPP, but also in between flares and also with bimekizumab blocking IL-17 A and F, we're getting advancement in terms of our skin clearance. Probably the highest psoriasis area and severity index (PASI) 100s we've seen in clinical trials. This sort of puts back the emphasis of IL-17 really driving disease outside of IL-23 and this is really important, as we have multiple options to offer our patients.This working in other subtypes of psoriasis, like psoriatic arthritis, is another very exciting area to wait and see what happens. Deucravacitinib was an interesting new mechanism of action for us in psoriasis, and that was really the first entry into blocking TYK2 for psoriasis. Now we have a number of other medications with even higher selectivity.My site currently runs a number of those trials, and we're seeing even better improvement with TYK2 blockade with some of these newer therapies.

[This transcript has been edited for clarity.]

To explore more of our coverage from Maui Derm NP+PA Fall 2024, click here.