Mind.Px is a groundbreaking tool to prospectively predict patient response to expensive psoriasis biologics, improving patient outcomes and potentially avoiding billions of dollars of annual healthcare spend.

Psoriasis Treatments

Psoriasis treatments aim to stop skin cells from growing too quickly and to remove scales. Options include creams and ointments (topical therapy), light therapy (phototherapy), and oral or injected medications.

Treatment choices differ based on disease severity. Moderate to severe psoriasis is often treated with systemic or expensive biologic drugs. These biologic drugs belong to different drug classes that include TNF inhibitors, Interleukin 12/23, Interleukin 17 and Interleukin 23. Responses vary by patient and many patients do not respond to the initial therapy. These non-responsive patients typically switch biologic drugs to move on to another drug class to seek symptom relief (“biologic switching”).

Biologic drugs, while very effective, are very costly for patients and medical insurance companies. Billions of dollars are spent each year for the biologic treatment of psoriasis. Most drugs require an initial “loading dose” to begin therapy. These loading doses result in high up-front costs as therapy starts.

Physicians and patients attempt to choose the proper therapy and require approval from insurance companies to tailor each patient’s treatment. However, many patients do not initially respond to the first biologic started (primary failure) and initial responders may develop decreasing efficacy over time (secondary failure). This results in discontinuing treatment and forces biologic switching. In addition, side effects or inconvenience also cause drug discontinuations.