Arcutis adds '90210' star power to skin condition awareness push

Arcutis Biotherapeutics has forged another celebrity partnership, signing up the actor Tori Spelling and her teenage daughter Stella McDermott to encourage people with inflammatory skin conditions to talk to their healthcare providers.

As someone living with eczema, Spelling—who first made her name as an actor in the 1990s playing Donna Martin on the TV series “Beverly Hills, 90210”—has used Arcutis’ Zoryve cream to treat the condition, for which the company won FDA approval in 2024. McDermott, meanwhile, has used Zoryve cream and foam to treat both eczema and seborrheic dermatitis, another skin condition in which Zoryve was approved in 2023. Rounding out Zoryve’s indications is an approval for plaque psoriasis.

Arcutis tapped the mother-daughter duo to discuss their experiences in the “Free to Be Me” campaign. The goal, according to the company, is to show the emotional and physical burden of inflammatory skin diseases and encourage people with the conditions to talk to their healthcare providers about long-term treatment options.

The product “has truly changed the way we manage our eczema—and has helped us feel more comfortable in our own skin every day,” Spelling said in a quote on the Zoryve website, while McDermott noted that after taking Zoryve she no longer feels the need to hide her scalp and always wear her hair down.

Spelling also emphasized the importance of finding a steroid-free treatment to treat her daughter's seborrheic dermatitis.

The steroid-free nature of Zoryve is central to Arcutis’ positioning of the product. L. Todd Edwards, who joined Arcutis as chief commercial officer in 2023, said at an analyst day last week that dermatology specialists write 17 million topical steroid prescriptions a year for patients with the three skin conditions treated by Zoryve, suggesting that Zoryve could ultimately take over 15% to 20% of topical steroid prescriptions.

Arcutis’ push to win market share is built on concerns about the safety of long-term steroid use. A recent review article by a dermatologist who has worked with companies including Arcutis, for example, highlighted a range of cutaneous and systemic adverse effects to make the case that physicians should prescribe steroids appropriately and consider newer steroid-sparing treatments.

The company has cautioned investors that the process will take time, pointing to the five- to 10-year shifts seen in analogous markets, but remains bullish on its prospects. Arcutis predicted peak sales of $2.6 billion to $3.5 billion for Zoryve last week, a figure that Guggenheim Securities analysts noted was well above their prior peak estimate of $1.4 billion in 2037. The analysts subsequently raised their estimate to $1.8 billion in a note to investors.

Arcutis has previously worked with celebrities to get its message out. The deal with Spelling and McDermott follows work with professional football player Odell Beckham Jr. to raise awareness of seborrheic dermatitis.

On an earnings call in February, Edwards said Arcutis was eschewing direct-to-consumer ads and relying on Beckham’s “celebrity reach, social media presence, digital advertising and publicity to generate public awareness.”