What to Look Forward to at RAD 2023

Jonathan Silverberg, MD, PhD, MPH, a board-certified dermatologist and professor at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, previews this weekend's Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis (RAD) conference in Washington, DC.

As conference chair, Silverberg shares insights into what attendees can expect and look forward to during their time in the nation's capital.

Silverberg: I am the conference chair for the Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis conference. It is an extraordinary amount of work that goes into planning this conference. And, you know, really bringing together some of the best minds in atopic dermatitis research and clinical practice, and just trying to keep up with the sheer enormity of research and development that has happened in the field. I mean, it's just been staggering, the number of new therapies and the amount of research done into better understanding of the disease, and pathogenesis, and the burden of the disease, and the clinical science. And so really trying to keep abreast of that and really try to keep it as clinically relevant as possible for the clinicians, what they can do in day-to-day practice to really step up their game and be better at identifying the right patients for the right medications and making the right treatment choices in tough scenarios.

Dermatology Times: What can attendees expect, and what can they look forward to?

Silverberg: This year's conference is going to be a really jam-packed session, where we're going to have just a tremendous amount of new data related to some of the new therapies that are coming out from the late-breaking research. But we've got some really cool, all clinically-oriented symposia around how to deal with important patient subsets. Particularly, we have ones on how to address infantile atopic dermatitis, recognizing the importance in differences in this patient subset with respect to safety, efficacy concerns, how to deal with those tougher facial eczema cases, what to do about food allergy testing, really the bread and butter of the challenges that we face in those patients. We're gonna have sessions devoted to understanding just the glut of new information that has come up on the safety of different systemic therapies out there with so many new therapies approved, what should we be on the lookout for, what's hype, what's not, what's real, what do we need to know about, and then really addressing some of the newer emerging stuff that's happening in the field, even with some of our approved therapies, some of the different off-label indications, different ways in which we can use them different subsets of patients that we could potentially target are very important. We're gonna have some some really fun and playful ways of learning as well as this session -- we're gonna have what we call the Atopic Dermatitis Games. So we're gonna be addressing a lot of just case-based situations, with what what can we do, what should we do, different ways of approaching challenging scenarios, trying to learn important sort of common, the Jeopardy game, the Jeopardy "AD" game, get it? You know, pun on words, but really try to understand a lot of what we've learned now in data updates, and our understanding of the disease, and what every clinician needs to know. Some really cool stuff and exploratory, but all things that are very clinically relevant: What we can do to assess long term control and clinical practice, how to make sure we're not missing patients who are poorly controlled, what are the best therapeutic approaches right now? And then, very importantly, we're going to be having a whole symposium devoted to how to reduce disparities in care for atopic dermatitis. Recognizing that in the United States, this remains still an enormous issue, and really not just in the US, around the world, and recognizing the problem, things that we can do in clinical practice today, to try to improve the quality of care that we are delivering. And then also talking about some new initiatives that have already borne fruit in terms of reducing disparities of care in the US.

Dermatology Times: What are you most looking forward to or excited about?

Silverberg: I don't know if I can pick a winner persay. I mean, I love it all. I think this is really all super, super exciting. I think to me, probably the pediatric infantile atopic dermatitis session, the updates on the systemic therapies, really all of it because it's all actionable today. I think that's the reality is that we've got not only the best of the best talking about the data that are out there, but really giving their insights into what we can do right now. It's not just theoretical; it's not just something that might pan out 20 years from now. It's what can we do right now, and really giving us more options and more tools. So to me, it's all exciting for that reason.

Dermatology Times: What new or late-breaking research can attendees expect?

Silverberg: There's a number of late-breaking projects that are going to be presented at the conference with a mixture of things, so some of it being more around understanding how to better characterize patients and identify which patients are more or less well-controlled, and more severe. And then on the flip side, a ton of new data in terms of our understanding of different treatment approaches, different existing therapies, or emerging therapies. So I think some of the most important data I think we're gonna see presented will be some of the safety updates for some of the newer therapies, in terms of understanding long term safety, in particular, and what are the real safety concerns that we need to think about? What are the safety signals from the real world? But we're seeing some new data as well for dupilumab being used, particularly in hand and foot eczema, and I think a very important subset of patients that clinicians struggle with and really trying to understand. And then some important additional analyses for a variety of other therapies that are emerging, some of the newer topical agents, some of the newer biologic agents that give us insight into where we're gonna be able to go with these. Within potentially the next 12 calendar months, we may have 3 or 4 new approved therapies, and so understanding how we should be using them, how we should be thinking about them.

Dermatology Times: How does this build off of the virtual RAD conference held in December 2022?

Silverberg: It's only 4 months or 5 months since the virtual conference, and yet, there's just been an explosion in terms of data in a good way: in our understanding of the disease, in new therapies, new data for different drugs, and even more coming after that. So in just a short period of time, a tremendous amount of new data to go through. But there was only so much we could cover in 1 partial day, and virtually. Being together again, in person, first of all, it's a whole different ballgame. When we're together in person, we get to interact. I would argue it's a more enjoyable learning experience and more effective learning experience. But we're gonna also have the ability to cover so much more ground in terms of some of the updates and different key patient subsets that we should be thinking about in clinical practice.