Martina J. Porter, MD: Discussing New Findings on Lutikizumab for HS Patients

In this interview with Martina J. Porter, MD, assistant professor of dermatology for Harvard Medical School, spoke with the HCPLive editorial team about new data on lutikizumab (ABT-981) treatment for hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) patients.

Porter, known for her work as dermatologist with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center specializing in HS, discussed recent phase 2 results on adults with moderate to severe HS who had failed anti-TNF therapy. They had received lutikizumab 300 mg on every other week or 300 mg per-week, and Porter noted that the patients showed higher HS Clinical Response (HiSCR 50) rates than placebo at Week 16.

“So lutikizumab is an IL1, or interleukin (IL) 1α/1β antagonist, and it's actually not the first IL1 inhibitor that we've seen in HS trials or publications,” Porter explained. “But some of the earliest studies of IL1 were for a medication called anakinra that had some positive results. Then interestingly, Janssen had a drug called bermekimab that they did for IL1 for HS and they actually did not find positive results for that study and terminated early.”

Porter noted that higher HiSCR 50 response rates were seen among those in the treatment arm than placebo, the study;s primary endpoint at the 16-week mark. She also went into the dosing regimens used in the trial.

“This trial used 3 different doses, so they used 100 milligrams every other week and then 300 milligrams every other week and 300 milligrams weekly, and only the higher dose was found to be significantly different from placebo,” Porter said. “But interestingly, the higher dose the weekly dose wasn't that different from the every other week and actually is slightly lower if you just look at the absolute values.”

Porter noted that this was fairly common in some of the other phase 2 studies, when continuing to go higher leads to a better response.

To find out more about this data, view the full interview segment posted above.

The quotes contained in this summary were edited for clarity.