News

We are happy to announce that we have just enrolled the first psoriatic patient in an open-label phase 2a trial, assessing the clinical efficacy and safety of a new, potential treatment.

Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune disease, triggering the fast growth of skin cells. By now, a worldwide estimated 125 million people are affected.

The predominant type is plaque psoriasis, commonly known as psoriasis vulgaris, with the typical skin patches that are red, dry, itchy, and scaly; it may affect genitals, face, hands, and feet, too. Psoriasis is considered moderate to severe when it affects more than 5 percent of the body surface, as calculated by the Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) score. Often, the disease has far-reaching systemic implications beyond the skin, such as cardiovascular comorbidities, psoriatic arthritis, metabolic syndrome, and depression.

Apart from topical treatment and phototherapy, several systemic therapies have been developed in the last years, among them small-molecule drugs and biologics, mostly targeting specific cytokines or lymphocytes.

Certain T cells, cytokines, and dendritic cells are heavily involved in the pathogenesis of psoriasis. Inflammatory myeloid dendritic cells and T cells release different kinds of cytokines, small proteins that serve as cell signaling messengers and amplify the inflammatory cascade towards autoimmunity.

Current efforts in drug development are directed towards addressing ever more specifically the immune system components that drive the inflammation in psoriasis.