Raj Chovatiya, MD, PhD: Psoriasis Treatment Developments, FDA Approvals in 2022

During an interview with HCPLive, Raj Chovatiya, MD, PhD, he spoke on some of the major developments in psoriasis treatment this year, recent FDA approvals such as spesolimab and tapinarof, and the subject of future research.

Chovatiya serves as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“Interestingly, despite everyone thinking that maybe we've accomplished everything we need to over the past couple of decades, still amazing progress, even in this past year for new therapies that are hitting the market for our patient,” Chovatiya stated.

When asked about some of the biggest advancements made this year, Chovatiya spoke about the large amount of treatments that have come about recently, as well as the lack of topicals available in recent years.

“So we actually had entrance into several new classes that we haven't had for quite a while,” he explained. “And so we're so used to subcutaneous biologic therapies being the next thing coming. And there's been so many of them, more than 10 of them really over the past handful of years. But we haven't seen much happening in the world of topicals…Really, innovation in oral therapy has been pretty limited as well with the previously a single option, and even infusion based therapies for sort of rarer psoriasis events.”

He went further in depth on the various treatments that have come about this year in the field of psoriasis treatment.

“And so kind of the big 4, let's say, of therapies for psoriasis that really came our way this year include 2 new nonsteroidal topical therapies: roflumilast cream and tapinarof,” he explained. “A new oral agent, deucravacitinib, and actually a new infusion agent for generalized pustular psoriasis, (which was) previously, a therapeutic area that didn't have a targeted treatment that was approved.”

Chovatiya described each new FDA approval in depth, exploring the benefits and drawbacks of each one in its application. He later went into a broader discussion about the future of research into newer treatments.

“I think a broader question that still exists now is that (since) we have so many choices, how do you really connect the right patient with the right therapy, knowing that there's going to be many choices that can be very efficacious and that have safety,” he explained. “The short answer is we probably don't know yet. But now that we're beginning to collect long term real data explicitly and deeply phenotype our patients, we're hopefully going to be able to make those connections and actually have the predictive capability when someone comes to see us, finding them the best medication for them.”

For more on psoriasis treatment advancements and recent FDA approvals, watch the full HCPLive interview above.