Skin deep innovation: Psoriasis patients can soon ditch the cream

The current treatment for plaque psoriasis — the most common variety of the psoriasis skin disease — consists of a variety of creams with different active ingredients that need to be applied to the skin morning and evening. The creams can be unpleasant and cumbersome to use, and they tend to stick to clothing.

The treatment is purely symptomatic.

»It doesn’t address the root causes of the disease, and when patients face a lifetime of applying these creams, it helps explain why a third of them stop using them,« says Associate Professor Andrea Heinz from the Department of Pharmacy at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.

Even during periods when the skin condition does not manifest as rashes and itchy patches, psoriasis patients need to apply the creams for the treatment to be effective.

But Andrea Heinz and her PhD student Anna-Lena Gürtler have recently developed an alternative. Using a medicated patch, some psoriasis patients may be able to ditch the creams and improve their quality of life.

It is crucial that the treatment be as effective as possible, as the condition typically lasts a lifetime, being caused by an autoimmune reaction in the body.

Two types of medicine combined

Andrea Heinz has been researching skin diseases for 15 years and has long been fascinated by the structure of the skin — how it ages and the diseases it can develop.

The idea for the patch came to her in 2022 together with Anna-Lena Gürtler, who at the time was working on her own PhD project building on an earlier PhD project about wound healing in Andrea Heinz’s research group.

Andrea Heinz has led the project for three years, and the main challenge for her and Anna-Lena Gürtler was to ensure that a patch could release two types of medication at different speeds in a stable way over three days.

The solution involved integrating the medication into a specially selected polymer that dissolves slowly over several days.

The two researchers have demonstrated in a series of experiments that the patches are effective. They placed them in a solution that mimics human tissue to study how the active substances are released over time. They also tested the patches on both pig and human skin samples obtained from surgeries.

The results were encouraging: The patch releases the active ingredients in the right amounts and at the correct pace.

»I’m very proud of my PhD student. Anna-Lena Gürtler did all the lab work and succeeded in making a polymer-based patch that actually works. It’s great when research results in something that functions — because sometimes research is just coming up with ideas that don’t work,« says Andrea Heinz, who, as supervisor, helped plan the experiments, describe them, and interpret the results.

According to Andrea Heinz, three to four per cent of Danes are affected by psoriasis. The disease is most common among those of European descent, but is prevalent worldwide. And while many patients could benefit from the new patch, it also has its limitations.

»Our patch will be best suited for people with plaque psoriasis and limited outbreaks. In practice, it’s impossible to apply a patch to the entire back or most of the body in those who are most severely affected,« she says.

The market will have to wait

Andrea Heinz has already received responses from around 20 patients who contacted her after hearing about the patch. They expressed interest in trying it and in making themselves available for clinical trials. She is grateful for this.

»Their messages really give my work meaning, because I personally don’t feel it’s enough to just sit in my office. I always want to talk to people and hear about their experiences and needs,« says Andrea Heinz.

She is pleased with how far the development of the patch has come, but unfortunately, it may still be many years before psoriasis patients will be able to buy it at the chemist.

»We now have a prototype of the patch — just a few samples in the lab. The next step is to get the pharmaceutical industry on board with the idea. If that succeeds, we’ll start trials on live animals, followed by human testing. And clinical studies take time. It will be maybe 10 to 15 years before it can be sold on the pharmaceutical market,« says Andrea Heinz.