At Advancing Innovation in Dermatology (AID), our mission is to catalyze transformative solutions for skin health. Behind this mission is a board of leaders whose experiences span academia, industry, policy, and entrepreneurship, each bringing a unique perspective to advancing innovation in dermatology.
In this second installment of our “Meet the Board” series, we’re honored to feature Dr. William H. Eaglstein, a physician, educator, policy leader, industry innovator, and AID Founding Trustee, whose career has shaped dermatology in profound ways. Dr. Eaglstein’s journey has taken him from serving as a U.S. Navy doctor to chairing dermatology departments at the Universities of Pittsburgh and Miami, and working as a research physician in Japan. As a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, he contributed to national health policy in Washington, D.C., and later brought his expertise to the FDA as chairman of a skin advisory panel and to the NIH as an advisory board member.
In industry, Dr. Eaglstein held senior roles, including Vice President at Stiefel (a GSK company), and he continues to advise innovation programs like Stanford’s SPARK initiative. His contributions to wound healing and drug development have earned him Lifetime Achievement Awards from the World Union of Wound Healing Societies and the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care/Wound Healing Society, as well as Honorary Membership in the American Academy of Dermatology.
Today, as Emeritus Chairman and Professor at the University of Miami, Dr. Eaglstein brings both a historical and forward-looking perspective to AID’s mission. In our interview, he shares insights on why dermatology needs bold innovation, how regulatory advances like surrogate endpoints could transform drug development, and why tissue regeneration should be a critical focus for the field’s future.
What personally drew you to AID and its mission?
I was drawn to AID by Dr. William (Bill) Ju, whose vision and implementation skills are extraordinary. I was drawn to AID’s mission because of my realization that very few new drugs (First-in-Class or NMEs) were developed for dermatologic indications. In contrast, almost all drugs to treat dermatologic indications were first developed for diseases of other tissues. The primary reason that new drugs were not developed for dermatologic indications was the perception (now proven wrong) that the market for skin disease drugs was small. (New Drugs and New Molecular Entities in Dermatology, W Eaglstein and G Corcoran, 2011) .
From your perspective, what does the next generation of dermatology innovators need most right now?
Now, as in the past, financial support is what innovators need most. Among the most critical needs beyond money is the development of FDA-accepted surrogate end points, which, by definition, predict ultimate therapeutic and safety outcomes early in the course of treatment. These will reduce the cost and speed up the approval of new drugs.
We’re in a moment of rapid change across biotech and healthcare. Where do you see dermatology falling behind, and where is it breaking new ground?
Although I am not certain we are behind, I would suggest we need more effort in the area of tissue/organ regeneration. Healing and repair, as we know them now, result in scarring and loss of function. That is, we are unable to induce the reproduction of skin with its full complement of elements such as pigment, sweat glands, suppleness, extendibility, and so forth. The AID and dermatology communities need to stay on top of basic science advances in this area and attempt to apply them to clinical problems.
In a climate where funding is increasingly competitive, what makes early dermatology innovation worth betting on?
Dermatology innovation is a good bet for two reasons. On the one hand, certain indications such as acne, seborrheic dermatitis, and many cosmetic indications affect very large numbers of people and hence offer risk takers large markets and returns. On the other hand, there are many skin diseases for which there are literally no approved and effective drugs. Although many of these diseases are thought to involve few people, when a potential treatment becomes available for study, the population of people with these conditions is most often found to be much larger than prophesied. Additionally, FDA pathways such as orphan drugs encourage risk takers in these areas. Fortifying these reasons that innovation in dermatology is a good bet is the availability of the community created by AID, which allows ready access to most of the key players in the field.