Dur­ing her res­i­den­cy, der­ma­tol­o­gist Misty El­eryan no­ticed that pa­tients of col­or were of­ten be­ing mis­di­ag­nosed or re­ceiv­ing de­layed di­ag­noses for their skin con­di­tions. Part of the rea­son why, she said, be­gins with a lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in text­books.

She and a team of doc­tors are on a mis­sion to change that — and this year, der­ma­tol­ogy gi­ant Gal­der­ma is join­ing the cause.

Misty El­eryan

El­eryan and fel­low der­ma­tol­o­gist Adam Fried­man co-edit­ed “The Full Spec­trum of Der­ma­tol­ogy: A Di­verse and In­clu­sive At­las,” a data­base of more than 800 im­ages of com­mon­ly di­ag­nosed con­di­tions across var­i­ous skin tones pub­lished by health­care com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny Sanova­Works. The orig­i­nal print ver­sion was pub­lished in 2021 and up­dat­ed last year, and thanks to fund­ing from Gal­der­ma, the group has launched an on­line data­base.

“I hope that our col­leagues, the ones that are prac­tic­ing der­ma­tol­ogy right now, will start to in­cor­po­rate some of our pho­tos or im­ages from the At­las in­to their lec­tures,” El­eryan says in a pro­mo­tion­al video. “We want them to see pa­tients of all dif­fer­ent skin tones … and know that things will look dif­fer­ent on dif­fer­ent skin tones.”

Ac­cord­ing to an analy­sis of thou­sands of im­ages from med­ical text­books pub­lished in 2018, just 4.5% showed dark skin tones. El­eryan said in the video that stud­ies per­formed be­tween 2006 and 2020 sug­gest that the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of dark­er skin in text­books is like­ly some­where be­tween 4% and 15%.

Al­li­son Fis­ch­er, head of con­sumer health­care prac­ti­tion­er mar­ket­ing at Gal­der­ma, said the project is the re­sult of sev­er­al years of gath­er­ing im­ages, and a team of der­ma­tol­o­gists trained in med­ical pho­tog­ra­phy will con­tin­ue to add new im­ages on a reg­u­lar ba­sis.

Gal­der­ma is well known for the pop­u­lar skin­care brand Cetaphil, spun out of Nestlé Health in 2019. It’s now led by Flem­ming Ørn­skov, who was CEO at Shire when it was ac­quired by Take­da. Back in June, the com­pa­ny shared pos­i­tive re­sults from one of two Phase III tri­als test­ing its mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body nemolizum­ab in the rare skin dis­ease pruri­go nodu­laris.

Ab­b­Vie’s Al­ler­gan Aes­thet­ics unit sim­i­lar­ly pro­mot­ed di­ver­si­ty through the cam­era lens last year, when it teamed up with Shut­ter­stock on its Dri­ving Racial Eq­ui­ty in Aes­thet­ic Med­i­cine, or DREAM ini­tia­tive. In ad­di­tion to pub­lish­ing a re­port on in­clu­siv­i­ty in beau­ty mar­ket­ing, it re­leased a roy­al­ty-free gallery rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “every gen­der, eth­nic­i­ty, cul­ture, age, and body type.”

“Most of the vi­su­als used in ad­ver­tis­ing and brand­ing do not re­flect the di­ver­si­ty we see around us every day, and an on­line search of im­agery re­veals just how un­der­rep­re­sent­ed many groups are in this space,” Aiden Darné, VP and glob­al head of Shut­ter­stock Stu­dios, said in a news re­lease at the time.

Boehringer Ingelheim uncorked some positive results suggesting that Spevigo can help prevent flare-ups in patients with a severe form of psoriasis, months after the drug was approved to treat existing flares.

Spevigo, an IL-36R antibody also known as spesolimab, met its primary and a key secondary endpoint in the Phase IIb EFFISAYIL 2 trial in patients with generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP), Boehringer announced on Monday. While the company is keeping the hard numbers under wraps until later this year, it said in a news release that it anticipates sharing the results with regulators.

AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi won an appeals court win on Monday, as the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found that the companies cannot be forced to provide 340B-discounted drugs purchased by hospitals from an unlimited number of community and specialty pharmacies.

“Legal duties do not spring from silence,” the decision says as the court makes clear that the federal government’s interpretation of the “supposed requirement” that the 340B program compels drugmakers to supply their discounted drugs to an unlimited number of contract pharmacies is not correct, noting:

A US appeals court has ruled against Johnson & Johnson’s use of bankruptcy to deal with mounting talc lawsuits, deciding that doing so would “create a legal blind spot.”

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a previous bankruptcy court decision on Monday, calling for the dismissal of a Chapter 11 filing by J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management.

Faced with more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging its talc-based products caused cancer, J&J spun its talc liabilities into a separate company called LTL Management back in October 2021 and filed for bankruptcy, a controversial move colloquially referred to as a “Texas two-step” bankruptcy. Claimants argued that the strategy is a misuse of the US bankruptcy code — and on Monday, a panel of judges agreed.

New York City is investing $20 million in biotech this year in the form of a 50,000-square-foot “innovation space” at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, complete with offices, research laboratories and events and programming space to grow biotech startups and companies.

Mayor Eric Adams said during his State of The City Address last Thursday that there will be an “emphasis” on making more opportunities for women and people of color to further diversify the industry. The City first reported the news.