Videos

Led by the moderator, the panelists/expert pharmacists examined common specialty pharmacy and insurance barriers facing patients starting tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy, sharing proactive strategies such as pre-identifying patient assistance and quick-start programs, securing copay assistance and grant funding, and writing data-driven appeal letters to support payer approvals.

In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Claudia R. Morris, MD, lead investigator and author of the phase 3 STArT trial and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, discussed the need for more meaningful end points in sickle cell pain trials, future research targeting acute chest syndrome, and how pharmacists can improve the collection of opioid-use data.

In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Claudia R. Morris, MD, lead investigator and author of the phase 3 STArT trial and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, discussed how treatment timing and patient heterogeneity may inform the design of future sickle cell pain trials.

In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Claudia R. Morris, MD, lead investigator and author of the phase 3 STArT trial and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, discussed how patient history and institutional pain-management practices may influence time to crisis resolution and how care teams, including pharmacists, can help standardize treatment.

The panelists examined dosing considerations for avapritinib, starting at 25 mg with titration to 50 mg in indolent systemic mastocytosis (SM) compared with 200 mg in advanced disease, as well as midostaurin's 100 mg twice-daily dosing in advanced SM, emphasizing patient counseling that dose adjustments reflect tolerability rather than treatment failure.

Led by the moderator, the expert pharmacists examined treatment options for advanced systemic mastocytosis (SM), including higher-dose avapritinib, midostaurin for patients without or with unknown KIT mutation status, and cytoreductive agents such as cladribine and interferon for those not responding to or tolerating targeted therapy.

Zahra Mahmoudjafari, PharmD, BCOP, FHOPA, MBA, challenges the assumption that oral agents (belumosudil) are inherently more convenient than intravenous therapy (axatilimab) by highlighting that the intravenous schedule creates structured monitoring touchpoints and that mechanism differences—not route alone—should drive sequencing decisions in heavily pretreated populations.