Professor Luke O'Neill

I mean, they bring some benefits, but they don't really stop it.

And they're not that effective in most people.

But then the big breakthrough came.

Scientists, immunologists mainly, were studying what was in the skin.

They find the cells and then they find the immune molecules that are overproduced in psoriatic skin.

These are called cytokines.

I've mentioned them before.

These are key signaling molecules of the immune system.

There's loads of them.

They're like little alarms that go off, I suppose, to wake up different immune cells.

And there's two of them in psoriasis, IL-17 and IL-23.

They're the two numbers to remember if you're interested in psoriasis.

IL stands for interleukin.

between leukocytes, that's where that name comes from, because you're communicating between white blood cells.

So number 17 and number 23 are there in abundance.

Now, what happened next was, well, drugs to block them.

And a drug was discovered to block IL-17, and my dear friend, Pierre Musick,

who's from Brittany.

He's a French rheumatologist.

He discovered IL-17.