Melinda Gooderham, MD: Clinical Implications of the reSURFACE 2 Trial

For health care providers who are considering treatments for their patients with plaque psoriasis, the long-term results of the reSURFACE 2 trial offer solid efficacy and safety data.

Melinda Gooderham, MD, dermatologist at the Skin Centre for Dermatology, Peterborough, Ontario, spoke with MD Magazine® about the study results and their implications for prescribers at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) in Washington, DC.

“From a prescriber’s point of view, you can sleep at night knowing your patients are doing well and you don't have to worry about some side effect coming up,” said Gooderham about tildrakizumab as a treatment option for plaque psoriasis.

The poster, “Efficacy and Safety of Long-term Tildrakizumab for Plaque Psoriasis: 3-Year Results From reSURFACE 2,” was shared at the AAD Annual Meeting, held March 1-5, 2019. Here is part 1 of her interview.

MD Mag: What do the reSURFACE extension study results mean for prescribers?

Gooderham: For a prescriber, usually you want a treatment that's easy to use for your patient, that's going to be durable and have results that last, and is safe. All of those things will add into your decision of what therapy to use. So, with tildrakizumab—which is a targeted monoclonal antibody to the p19 sub-unit of interleukin 23—it's a very safe target and a very effective target. With dosing every 12 weeks, it's very convenient for the patient—4 injections a year—and from a prescriber’s point of view, if you can get your patient to clear or almost clear and have high levels of response, these will be maintained over time. So, that means less dose optimization, less extra visits from your patient looking for better results. They have an easy treatment that's working for them, and it continues to work for them. As we get more and more information from these extension studies, our idea of the safety of this medication is just being reinforced. We can see that the medication continues to be safe—no new issues are arising over time as we accumulate patient-years of exposure. From a prescriber’s point of view, you can sleep at night knowing your patients are doing well and you don't have to worry about some side effect coming up.

Any final thoughts on the value of extension studies?

I think when we continue to follow these extension studies and follow these patients and see how they continue to do well and are reassured with no new safety concerns and that any sort of adverse events are in the same rates that we would see in that psoriasis patient population with this target, with this medication, and with other medications in the same class, we can be really reassured that we have the right target when we're treating psoriasis. And I think the more information that we're able to gather and share at these types of meetings is really important and I think will help guide the prescribers who might have the patient sitting in front of them looking for a safe and effective solution.