Scinai Immunotherapeutics Ltd. announced successful in-vivo preclinical study results of its innovative anti IL-17A/F VHH antibody fragment ('NanoAb') as a local, first of its kind, intralesional biological treatment for the large and underserved population of patients suffering from mild to moderate plaque psoriasis. The Market Need: there are about 13 million patients diagnosed with plaque psoriasis in the 7 major markets (US, EU5 and Japan). Scinai's product is designed to allow patients with mild to moderate psoriasis to benefit from a low frequency treatment that comes with the high specificity and potency saved for biologics but with significantly reduced risk of local side effects associated with corticosteroids or systemic side effects associated with systemic administration of biologics.

The study was conducted by the team of Prof. Amos Gilhar, a leading researcher and dermatologist who heads the internationally renowned Skin Research Laboratory at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. The study aimed to demonstrate that local, intralesional treatment with Scinai's NanoAb, which targets the twoisoforms of the cytokine IL-17 (A and F) implicated in plaque psoriasis, has at least a non-inferior anti-inflammatory effect on the psoriatic lesions compared to corticosteroids and systemic biologics. For this purpose, human skin was transplanted onto the back of SCID-Beige mice and psoriasis was induced by injection of activated human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients diagnosed with psoriasis.

Scinai next intends to further fine tune dosing and drug half-life and conduct a longer duration follow on in-vivo animal study in late 2024, again, in collaboration with Prof. Gilhar of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, complemented by a pre-clinical toxicology study before commencing a first-in-human clinical trial in late 2025.