Clinical Pearls and FDA Approvals in Bullous Pemphigoid, With Prince Adotama, MD

The 2025 Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, featured a session titled ‘Bullous Pemphigoid: The Time to Treat is Now.’1

HCPLive spoke with Prince Adotama, MD, assistant professor of dermatology at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. Adotama touched on a series of highlights from his talk, including the recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of dupilumab.2

“[Bullous pemphigoid] predominantly impacts patients over the age of 60, usually over the age of 70,” Adotama noted. “Your immune system is going haywire. It's attacking your skin, leading to these intense blisters. It's extremely itchy, extremely pruritic, and patients are very bothered by it…We now have an FDA-approved treatment for bullous pemphigoid, or BP. So it's really an exciting time to be a BP expert treating these conditions. We want to make sure other providers, other dermatologists, are aware and ready to treat this condition.”

Dupilumab therapy, Adotama noted, targets interleukin (IL)-4 and IL-13, which are elevated in affected skin. The medication has a long safety record in atopic dermatitis.

“We have years of data, I think, at least eight or nine years of data on atopic dermatitis that [show it’s] safe,” Adotama said. “It can be used in people as young as six months of age. So I feel very confident trying a treatment like this on a patient. In fact, one of the patients we mentioned was a 96-year-old patient who had this condition, and I felt very confident giving it to that patient, because we know there's a great deal of safety associated with this drug…The hope is that we continue to develop new treatments that target specific cytokines.”

Adotama expressed that patients’ risks of infection are important to remember when looking at new treatments targeting bullous pemphigoid, especially given the advanced age of many patients with this skin condition.

“There are a lot of treatments that are not so suppressive,” Adotama said. “So omalizumab, which is a treatment that's FDA-approved for chronic spontaneous urticaria, has some evidence that it can work for bullous pemphigoid. Now it is used off-label, so it's not FDA-approved yet for bullous pemphigoid, but it can be used off-label, and it has a lot of great results for it.”

For more about the topics highlighted in Adotama’s session, view the interview above. For additional news on recent data in dermatology, view the latest coverage of Fall Clinical Dermatology.

Adotama has reported personal fees from Galderma, Regeneron, and Proctor and Gamble.

References

1. Adotama P, Culton D. Seminar-in-Depth: Bullous Pemphigoid: The Time to Treat is Now. Session presentation at the 2025 Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, Oct 23-26, 2025.

2. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. Dupixent® (dupilumab) Approved in the U.S. as the Only Targeted Medicine to Treat Patients with Bullous Pemphigoid (BP). Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. June 20, 2025. Accessed October 25, 2025. https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/dupixentr-dupilumab-approved-us-only-targeted-medicine-treat.