Ben-Gurion University researchers and Teva develop psoriasis drug

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), in collaboration with Israel largest drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NYSE: TEVA), have developed a promising drug candidate to treat psoriasis. The finding was reported in a new paper published in Chemistry and Biology.

One of the key signals involved in the progression of psoriasis, which affects at least four million American, is the immune system protein Interleukin 17 (IL-17). The research team developed a method to inhibit IL-17 pro-inflammatory signals and proved that their engineered receptor, IL-17R, is highly effective in reducing IL-17 induced inflammatory signals in mice models. Moreover, injection of the receptor into a mouse model with acute human psoriasis eliminated the symptoms, essentially curing the disease.

"Using directed evolution to improve the properties of the IL-17 receptor, we have created engineered mutants that might prove there is a viable treatment for patients with severe psoriasis that do not respond to current drugs," explains Amir Aharoni, one of the researchers in BGU's Department of Life Sciences and the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev. "Since the directed evolution method can be applied to other receptors involved in autoimmune diseases and cancer, I believe that we are just starting to unravel the potential of this approach," Dr Aharoni adds.