What’s Next for Chronic Hives? New Targets Expand the Treatment Landscape.

New and emerging therapies for chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) were a major focus at the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) meeting, with advances spanning interleukin (IL)-4 receptor blockade, Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibition, and novel strategies targeting c-KIT and mast cells.

In this exclusive MedPage Today video, recorded following the meeting in April, Brian Kim, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, highlights some of the most promising developments in CSU and chronic inducible urticaria (CIndU), and why he believes “the future is bright” for treatment.

Following is a transcript of his remarks:

Hello, my name is Brian Kim. I’m professor of dermatology and vice chair of research at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. I’m going to be speaking a little bit about the chronic spontaneous urticaria session, which was only the second session at the American Academy of Dermatology so far since the first one in the AAD meeting prior. This was in Denver, Colorado.

And we spoke a lot about remibrutinib [Rhapsido] in particular as a hot topic, a recently approved drug, a BTK inhibitor for chronic spontaneous urticaria. Also, they’ve reported really great phase III data in chronic inducible urticaria across three different domains: CIndU with dermatographism, cold urticaria, as well as cholinergic urticaria. So it’s a very exciting topic.

But of course, we also have dupilumab [Dupixent] for chronic spontaneous urticaria as well. Dupilumab is always going to be a hot topic given the number of type 2 blockade indications that now exist in dermatology.

And then another hot topic is barzolvolimab, which is a c-KIT inhibitor. This is a unique drug that actually not only inhibits mast cells, but probably depletes mast cells as well. Full disclaimer: a conflict of interest on my part, a company that I co-founded called Alys Pharma also has a very exciting c-KIT inhibitor that leverages a bispecific strategy. So it only would block c-KIT on mast cells, and this is a unique way to iterate beyond barzolvolimab as well.

So lots of exciting stuff in chronic spontaneous urticaria as well as CIndU from IL-4 receptor to BTK to c-KIT and various targeting strategies. So the future is bright for CSU and beyond.