Video
Non-JAK Inhibitor Therapy Options Available for Vitiligo Treatment
Dr King presents interleukin-15, a non-JAK inhibitor therapy option for the treatment of vitiligo.
Jeffrey D. Dunn, PharmD, MBA: There’s at least 1 interleukin in development, a non-JAK inhibitor. Dr King, do you want to take that one?
Brett King, MD, PhD: Sure. There’s a clinical trial happening at the Immune Tolerance Network, a part of the NIH [National Institutes of Health], of an antibody to interleukin-15, or IL-15. IL-15 is thought to be an important mediator of T-cell survival in the skin in patients with vitiligo. The whole idea being that often when we stop treatment, the disease and white spots come back. Not uncommonly, they come back in the same spots where they were to begin with.
Why is that? There’s a lot of good science that says there’s a certain set of immune cells that reside in those patches of vitiligo and that their survival relies on interleukin-15, or IL-15. The whole concept behind this trial is if you give an IL-15 antibody, then you dampen that signal or you take away the survival signal, and maybe we’re able to remit. We’re getting close conceptually to remitting—not curing—disease without ongoing treatment. It’s a provocative concept, and we’re a long way away, but it’s interesting because I suspect the payers would love if we were saying that somebody is going to undergo treatment for their psoriasis and it’s going to go away for 5 years.
Jeffrey D. Dunn, PharmD, MBA: Drug holidays, yes.
Brett King, MD, PhD: That would be huge, but we aren’t there. I don’t think we’re even close in psoriasis, but we’re having that conversation in vitiligo, which is exciting, but a ways away.
Transcript edited for clarity.
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