Anna de Bendedetto, MD: New Discoveries in Atopic Dermatitis Treatment

In this interview with HCPLive, Anna de Benedetto, MD, discussed some of the discoveries made in atopic dermatitis (AD) treatment and her views on the future of treatment in the dermatology space.

De Benedetto’s presentation on this topic was given at the Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis (RAD) 2023 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. She is known for her work as an Associate Professor of Dermatology at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

“I started highlighting technologies because I really think the way we are able to extract information from the patient is changing,” de Benedetto explained. “So right now we use technology, and they allow us to extract a lot of information with very small samples.”

She added that this type of testing can be the superficial type of scraping, where then dermatologists can do proteomics, transcriptomic, lipidomic, microbiome, to other methods, like proteomic in the serum or in the biopsies or transcriptome in the biopsy as well.

“So I think adding this large amount of information from a small sample allows us to have this greater source that we can reach out to different populations of patients,” she said. “So that's one path, which I think is very exciting. I think it is really affecting the way we are understanding the disease.”

De Benedetto continued her discussion of developments in the field of dermatology testing, specifically relating to conditions like AD.

“On the other hand, there is all of the information that we have been gathering over the years,” she said. “And I think it's very exciting the way we finally realized that not all the patients are the same. So we know they're different based on the profile, based on the skin, based on the microbiome. So all of this will allow us to better understand our patients.”

De Benedetto also noted that she believes the evolution of AD from the treatment perspective occurred a little bit after the peak of psoriasis treatment research, noting that psoriasis in a sense was and still is advantaged.

“So for the number of treatments to date, yes, atopic dermatitis is really pushing the field right now,” she explained. “We definitely have not only already approved a lot of different options, targeting a different class, both the topical and systemic.”

She continued to discuss the different options, adding that dermatologists have many more treatment options in the pipeline.

For further information about de Benedetto’s presentation, view the interview above.

The quotes contained in this interview were edited for clarity.