An oral IL-23 blocker holds clearance to a year

The edition in brief

Today's dermatology edition opens with 52-week results from ICONIC-ADVANCE 1 and 2, two phase 3 trials of icotrokinra — an oral peptide that blocks the interleukin-23 receptor — in 1,505 adults with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. Clearance rose to week 24 and held: about 70-75% had IGA 0/1 and PASI 90 during weeks 24 to 52, and about 50% reached IGA 0 and PASI 100. Of those clear or almost clear at week 16, 85-90% still were at week 52. Adverse events matched placebo to week 16 and were fewer than deucravacitinib to week 24, with no new signals to a year. A randomised, double-blind switching study of ABP 654, a ustekinumab biosimilar, took 453 patients through three alternating exposures. Geometric mean ratios for AUCtau and Cmax between weeks 52 and 64 were 0.93 (90% CI 0.89-0.98) and 0.95 (0.90-1.00), inside the 0.8-1.25 margin, with similar efficacy, antidrug antibodies and adverse events. Two nested case-control studies within 19,120 Dutch patients tested whether refined histopathological variables add prognostic value in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. In the population-based set, none was significantly associated with metastasis; only solar elastosis showed an inverse association in the risk-matched set. And in 21,503 Australian and New Zealand kidney transplant recipients followed over 212,317 person-years, skin cancer mortality was 11.1 times the general population — 34.5 times for keratinocyte cancer.