In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Saakshi Khattri, MD, of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, discusses a phase I study of a potential drug for generalized pustular psoriasis presented by James Krueger, MD, PhD, of Rockefeller University at the American Academy of Dermatology's recent annual meeting.
Following is a transcript of her remarks:
Seven patients with generalized pustular psoriasis were treated with this IL-36 receptor blocker [BI 655130] and what was seen is that in as early as 1 week, there was significant clinical improvement, and by week 4, all these patients were cured. There was not only clinical improvement, but also significant improvement in the sense that cytokines such as IL-1, IL-6, and TNF alpha all improved at week 1 and week 4. Then there was improvement in chemokines CXCR1, CXCR2, which cause neutrophil chemotaxis. They went down as well with treatment.
This is huge because there's a huge unmet need in generalized pustular psoriasis, because there's nothing that's approved for it, and it is a multisystem disease with mortality associated with it. In addition, besides just clinical improvement and mechanistic improvement, on skin biopsies, there was an improvement in neutrophilic infiltrate in week 1 and week 4, and that does correlate with the mechanism of action and the fact that neutrophils play a central role in this disease process.
Is it just generalized pustular psoriasis that it will pan out for, or does it open sort of a door for other neutrophilic diseases such as Sweet's syndrome or pyoderma gangrenosum or palmoplantar pustulosis -- that remains to be seen.