Raj Chovatiya, MD, PhD: Winter Clinical Highlights on Atopic Dermatitis, Abrocitinib

In a segment of his interview with HCPLive, Raj Chovatiya, MD, spoke on his 2023 Winter Clinical Dermatology Conference presentation entitled ‘Learn More About CIBINQOTM (abrocitinib).’

Chovatiya works as an assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Department of Dermatology.

During his interview segment, he spoke about highlights from his presentation

“I think that the big thing that we really wanted to get across to the group was number one, JAK inhibitors are here,” Chovatiya said. “It's the next biggest, latest thing when it comes to our patients with atopic dermatitis. And it's a really powerful and selective and targeted approach to be thinking about treatment for our moderate to severe patients that otherwise don't have adequate control.”

Chovatiya went on to describe more about what he presented at Winter Clinical regarding JAK inhibitor abrocitinib.

“So in the case of abrocitinib, the points that we sort of reviewed in our talk were, number 1, what is the JAK stat?” he explained. “How does it work? When it comes to atopic dermatitis, what exactly is abrocitinib as sort of a JAK1 selective-type inhibitor. And then we reviewed data from the clinical trials the JADE MONO therapy trials as well as JADE COMPARE that allowed for the use of concurrent topical corticosteroids as well as some comparison across other treatments.”

He further described his presentation’s talking points, adding other information covered by the discussion with his audience.

“And then finally, we talked a little bit about safety both in the short run and long run and some newer post-hoc analyses really thinking about what happens when patients may not respond to one medication, but then end up getting on abrocitinib and what that may look like going forward,” he said.

Chovatiya also explained that prior to abrocitinib’s use on atopic dermatitis, there were fewer good options available.

“For years, we were using relatively unselective, broadly active immunosuppressants. So methotrexate, mycophenolate, cyclosporine, azathioprine, you name it,” Chovatiya said. “These are globally reducing the activity of the immune system, so they can be helpful in the right context. But what we've really been craving is something that can actually give us that type of effect and potentially target what we were interested in as far as something relevant to atopic dermatitis.”

Chovaitya also later discussed the topic of abrocitinib’s safety profile and future research on the road ahead for the treatment option.

For more information from this interview segment, watch the full segment above.