2024 American Academy of Dermatology Meeting Kicks off in San Diego | AAD 2024

More than 17,000 dermatologists are headed to San Diego this weekend for the American Academy of Dermatologists. They will be listening to more than 1,600 speakers talk about pretty much everything skin, nail and hair related, from alopecia to rosacea to cutaneous lymphoma to psoriasis.

And the Trekkies among them will have a special treat. William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk on the original “Star Trek” television series that aired in the 1960s, is scheduled to give the keynote address Sunday morning.

The meeting officially started this morning and runs through Tuesday.

“I think the abstracts, particularly often the late-breaking abstracts, contain a lot of trial data. It can be really exciting to see some of that cutting-edge data as it's released from pivotal clinical trials,” said John S. Barbieri, M.D., MBA, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who is speaking at four sessions.

“I'd love to see more active comparator studies, in dermatology comparing treatment A versus treatment B — we definitely need more of those,” Barbieri said. “I don't think I'm going to see too many of them this year. But I hope we start to see more in the future.”

Raj J.Chovatiya, M.D., Ph.D., a clinical associate professor at the Rosalind Franklin University Chicago Medical School, says he looks forward to hearing about practical tips at the meeting as well as the late-breakers and the newest therapies in early-stage trials. But he says the meeting also marks for him another year into a new era in dermatology.

“One of the most exciting things, aside from all the fun stuff that I selfishly get to do, is the fact that we are one more year moving forward into a new era in dermatology,” Chovatiya said. ”What do I mean by that? Historically, dermatology has always been thought of as specialty of topical steroids, oral steroids, generally nonspecific anti-inflammatory therapies. And while these still have a place in our therapeutic armamentarium, the explosion in targeted topical and systemic therapies for many of our inflammatory and immunologic diseases is really clear. And I think it's sort of a call to not only innovation, and for us to really step up our game in terms of therapy.”