Jerry Bagel, MD, MS: What do you see as the future of psoriatic disease treatment, and what are some of the most anticipated developments in the field?

Alexa Hetzel, MS, PA-C: We talk about this all the time. We’re always searching for the cure. We’d always like to have everybody be 100% cured of their psoriasis, but we just did a clinical study and we’re going to be able to skin sample some of these patients to know which biologic, or medication, is going to work specifically for them based on their skin DNA. We have this great TYK2, deucravacitinib, which is exciting for patients. We also have a new IL-17 coming out, bimekizumab. We have great options.

Jerry Bagel, MD, MS: The pharmacogenetics will increase the frequency of us being able to get it right the first time. It’s not going to change the efficacy of these drugs, but it will change how we’re going to write because we can determine things, like if you’ll respond to IL-23 the best, and be 90% certain of how that goes.

As far as development, under the National Psoriasis Foundation, I was part of the study article about the treatment to target where our goal is that everybody should have 1% or less body surface area. Yes, to find a cure would be great. National Psoriasis Foundation is spending $4.5 million a year on research to find that goal. I will say it’s a lot easier to treat psoriasis in 2022 than it was in 1982, 1992, 2002, or even in 2012.

With that, thank you very much, Alexa, for this insightful discussion. Thank you to our audience for watching this HCPLive® presentation. We hope you found this Peers & Perspectives® discussion to be useful and informative.

Transcript Edited for Clarity