Highlights

In the AD realm I think certainly we, of course, don’t have any FDA-approved oral therapies at the present time. Dupixent, which is very, very safe and now FDA-approved in kids – you know, with as young as six. It exists on an island, there is no other FDA-approved biologic. It’s a pretty darn good medicine, it works pretty well for most. It’s not a disease killer, sort of like some of the psoriasis biologics are, in terms of having PASI 90 and even PASI 100 in the package inserts for medicines like Taltz.

JAK inhibitors were supposed to have launched probably middle of this year, but the FDA, of course, found that relative to TNFs in Xeljanz they had a much higher rate of MACE events and so the FDA kind of said, ‘let’s pump the breaks a little bit, we’re going to look at this a little bit more.’ And in many ways, if a TNF already has a black box warning and they’re saying, ‘oh, this has a higher rate of these events,’ relative to something that already has a black box, I mean in some sense it’s almost like they’re saying it’s a double black box, right? So the safety is definitely a major concern here. The public data, based on a lot of those, at least for atopic derm, looks overwhelmingly positive from the efficacy side. We know it is highly effective, or at least most of them are. Some, of course, work better than others. You know, taking effect as soon as day two, drastic reductions in itch and having the nicety of being once-a-day sort of oral dosing. And those are all major positives.