Professor Luke O'Neill

So it can't really be bacterial in origins.

It's a mystery as to what's causing this.

And lots of research is trying to pin that

down.

But we do know it's immune.

We know cells called T-cells go in.

That'll be very important later.

And these T-cells are involved in fighting infection and they go in in droves into the psoriatic skin and they release all these sort of chemicals that will cause the inflammation that's happening in the skin.

And inflammation, of course, is the hallmark of psoriasis redness.

swelling, a bit of pain, you know, they're the key features of inflammation anyway.

And the T-cell has a primary role here.

It's the key immune cell.

And again, that would have been discovered, oh, 30 odd years ago.

You can take samples of psoriatic skin and study them in the lab.

And I would have worked with labs that do that, you know, and they look at it down the microscope, they analyse it in detail, and they're the ones who began to see loads of T-cells

in the psoriatic lesion, as we call it.

And when I was doing my PhD in London all those years ago, my supervisor said, every time a new immune molecule is found, lo and behold, the psoriasis guys find it in psoriasis.

And it's quite true.

All the immune components are there, but the T cell seems to dominate.

Now, there are different types.