Israeli researchers from Ben Gurion University are a few steps closer to formulating a drug that could make the autoimmune skin disease, known as psoriasis, a thing of the past, one of the researcher told Xinhua Monday.

The research, led by Prof. Amir Aharoni from the university's Life Science Faculty, has found a way to prevent the inflammation and flaking of the skin typical in the disease.

"Psoriasis is caused by a disturbance in the natural balance between pro-inflammatory signals and signals that inhibit inflammation," Aharoni said.

"What we did is inhibit a cytokine, a protein known as IL17, which is a protein that is pro-inflammatory, and when the body secretes them in high levels the body reacts to it. We developed a protein called IL17R using engineering, that can inhibit the process of IL17," the researcher said.

Aharoni's team works with "directed evolution," used for therapeutic reasons by engineering proteins, a process that is mainly used nowadays to create antibodies.

The researchers have finished the first phase of the study with the mice, which were implanted diseased human skin, but are still a long way until they begin trials on human patients.

"We need more funding to begin the research in humans, but the experiments on mice were almost 100 percent successful. But we have a long way to go until we start with human trials, I can't say how many years, really, we're only in the beginning," he said.

According to Aharoni, the results on mice have been so positive that they have opened a new line of investigation into other autoimmune diseases and cancer.

"We're beginning to look into arthritis and Crohn diseases, because we believe that protein directed evolution can be very helpful in this field, and we are only beginning to tackle into it, " the researcher said.