New antibody therapy dramatically improves psoriasis symptoms in clinical trial

http://goo.gl/zxvnWg

Many patients suffering from psoriasis showed significant recovery after just a single dose of an experimental treatment with a human antibody that blocks an immune signaling protein crucial to the disease, researchers report. By the end of the trial, conducted at Rockefeller University and seven other centers, nearly all of the 31 patients to receive treatment saw dramatic, if not complete, improvement in their symptoms.

"The striking result we achieved using a human antibody that targets the signal interleukin-23 suggests we are on the threshold of doing something very different from our current model of treating psoriasis with immunosuppressive drugs throughout an adult lifetime," says study author James Krueger, director of the Milstein Medical Research Program, D. Martin Carter Professor in Clinical Investigation and head of the Laboratory of Investigative Dermatology. "It raises the possibility of working toward long-term remission -- in other words, a cure." The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology published the results recently.