Transcription
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this is my title uh obviously we're in
lumere right in the middle of lumere so
it's very appropriate that we talk about
light but as opposed to actually what
you're experiencing lumere which is the
visible end of the spectrum what you can
see I'm going to be talking about
another part of the light spectrum and
its potential as a therapeutic okay
something maybe you're not not aware of
okay so this all started 20 years ago
roughly good of give take I had a a very
tall South African local GP from Peter
Lee knocked on my door and came in and
came up with a bit of a wacky idea I
thought at the time being a very
skeptical scientist we've got a few
scientists in the audience you know what
I mean you know we are generally
skeptical about things and he came up
with this idea of potentially using uh
infrared light a particular wavelength
from infrared light as a therapeutic in
this case actually to treat curs okay so
it was an antiviral approach I might
come back to that right at the end you
might guess what I might talk about at
the end um so this this is what he came
up with and his first question because
he was a medic Medics don't tend to know
too much about biology and things like
that they come in he say he ask me
basically how does this work how could
this work as a therapy so that was my
first first question couple of years on
I uh we just started exploring the idea
and the potential of of this this this
uh this uh effect and I eventually
convinced him let's move into the brain
because some of the mechanisms that we
were finding out about this therapy were
very relevant to the brain I'm a
neuroscientist so I encourage Gordon
let's let's look at the brain and start
exploring and there's obvious reasons
why you want to look at the brain
disease I don't need really need to tell
this audience is is a major major and
growing Boris a major and growing
problem for everybody basically not the
just the people that suffer from
Alzheimer's their carers friends
everybody basically so asim's disease
that there's a lot of words I mean I
don't really need to say what's on the
on the there there's a lot of people
that suffer from Alzheimer's and they're
that's growing uh in the UK rough
estimate three4 of a million potentially
creeping up to a million and that will
be growing okay so it's a major problem
and Parkinson's disease is number two
it's another one that I'm uh exploring
as well uh for obvious reasons which
you'll hopefully see later so major
brain
diseases uh uh of complex diseases
that's another thing to bear in mind you
can't tackle outs disease or Park diseas
of a single drug single
Target uh which is really the way we've
gone so far unfortunately we spent a
huge amount of money wasted you know you
might have seen a lot of press about
hemoid antibody approaches never going
to work okay they've already proved to
be negative we're still pushing it
unfortunately because we're desperate
anyway that's enough politics uh okay so
light this just to introduce you to the
to light so as I said at the moment
we're concentrating in lumere around the
visible range okay
so that's that's the uh the range we're
looking at at the moment literally this
is the range we're talking about
infrared light and particularly at this
end of the infrared light is what we're
interested in okay it's an
unusual wavelength to study it's
actually we had to convince a company to
make the LEDs for that wavelength
because people didn't really believe
that wavelength was particularly useful
biologically so we had to convince
them okay reason why we use this
wavelength this this is one very
important
reason actually when you expose the top
of the skull this is the helmet in front
of me here I'll show you in a minute a
bit
more this light wavelength actually
penetrates through the skull into the
brain quite deeply you're talking about
that sort of length it's quite
surprising maybe you think how the heck
does that work in fact the skull works
as a a lens it actually focuses the
light I didn't know that when I first
studied this wavelength I was pretty
rubbish at physics at school I didn't
really understand that principle I
assumed okay you had to design the light
to go into the thinnest parts of the
skull but in fact it's complete opposite
the skull was actually focusing the
brain deep into the skull into the brain
the other aspect of this wavelength it
is actually the peak transmission
wavelength of water and as your brain
70% of your brain is water so once it's
in it actually penetrates even deeper
because it goes through water very well
or travels through water okay so that's
a very good reason to look at this
wavelength okay to start with cuz it
needs to get in to the Target okay so
for me as a pharmacologist understanding
that yeah it has to get to Target
otherwise it's not going to do anything
so that's the first thing okay so that's
right so we're back going back to
outside's disease just to take you
through a little bit of what it's about
it's a little bit depressing it's some
of these slides obviously because it's a
tough disease really tricky disease
there's lots of different processes as I
said it's a complex disease lots of
things happens over time as the disease
progresses things like
inflammation you lose the neurons the
connections they're called synapses the
connections you lose them you and you
develop proteins that you probably have
heard of things like amalo you may have
heard amalo protein you when you look at
it outside my brain you see these
deposits of protein that's when proteins
have been misfolded chucked out and you
get these plaques in fact it's a bit of
a red herring it's too late then
actually in the disease progression okay
but anyway it's a very important part of
the disease pathology okay so just bear
that in mind okay I'm going to tell you
a little bit about what happens in aging
you know when you get to my age things
are starting to go a bit arai so things
like reduced battery function so what I
mean by that is in the cell you've got a
organel called a mitochondria and that's
your battery basically that runs the
cell okay and over as you age that
starts to get you know starts to drain a
bit get lower and lower in terms of
activity okay uh also as you age you
start to lose neurons you know cells
become stressed different ways of stress
physiologically stressed behavioral
stress can cause cells to to be lost for
various reasons okay so in a outs of
brain here you can you know really get a
real loss of of nerve cells okay so bear
that in mind and within that you've got
the protein all these horrible proteins
misfolding and things like that and that
kills neurons other things you get
connection misconnections connections
start to to go AR that's what this image
is supposed to depict you're starting to
lose connections between between neurons
and f as I said inflammation is a really
important uh aspect of of of brain
disease Parkinson's outs all the ALS all
those inflammation is a massive problem
and it's quite often because as you age
that's I said your blood brain barrier
that that barrier that helps you protect
yourself from INF you know excessive
inflammation start to get bit leaky and
things start to get into the brain and
start to affect the brain okay so
inflammation is a really important facet
of Alzheimer's disease okay so what does
the light give you okay bearing in mind
those complex elements that underly the
disease and if you really want to you
know Game Changer in terms of treating
the disease you need to do you need to
affect all those those processes simil
mously okay so the first thing this
treatment does this light and actually
other wavelengths of infrared light do
similar things okay is do this so it
produces a gas nitric oxide not laughing
gas similar I often get asked that is it
laughing yes no it's nitrous oxide is
slightly different but nitric oxide is a
really important gas physiological gas
and one of its main functions is to
dilate your blood vessels so in other
words it makes them expand and more
blood can flow into your brain okay
again doesn't take too much to think
about that that's a good thing yeah when
you have Alima disease or other diseases
you know your blood supply starts to get
a bit ropey blood supply more energy
potential within the cell so you get
images like this uh you know increased
blood flow the red indicating more okay
so that's what that's what the L therapy
does that was actually the first thing
we our first paper actually demonstrated
that it did that and it did it quite
selectively for that wavelength more
than other wavelengths some some
wavelengths weren't so good actually
went the other way so we've avoided
those over the years okay so so it's not
all good news with with light
generally okay so other things so he
does that which is great but it's not
all about that other things it does it
increases the energy so this is our this
is your battery in every new nerve cell
you've got every body every cell in your
body actually pretty much has
mitochondria it's it's your batteries
that run all these cells in the brain
you need a lot of mitochondria because
the brain is pretty active in fact 30 or
40% of your oxygen supplies goes to the
brain really the rest is for the rest of
the body so it's really important to
have that and and have a have a battery
that's working well so you get increased
ATP which for the those you know up on
your biology you know that's your energy
source ATP is what you're trying to
generate as well as that this is the
image to depict in know you starting to
recharge your battery so you need to
plug in your charger for your battery
it's starting to recharge it Okay so
we've got you know biological evidence
for this this is just a obviously a
pictorial representation of what's
Happening uh other things so other
things is that you also
increase particular proteins like this
proteins is a neurotropic factor so it's
a nerve growth factor so that tells you
what it does okay so in other words it
potentially can repair or regenerate
neurons which again is a good thing for
brain diseases potentially for recovery
and repair so it does that and finally
on this side I've depicted it with these
this little schematic chaperon chaperons
are like friendly proteins that you can
stimulate with this light therapy and
we've shown you a lot of these HSP 40
h570 very important stress induced cuz I
class the light as mild stress and good
A little bit of stress is good okay
induces these these protective responses
and that's what these chaperon proteins
are they're very important stress
responses and very important protective
chaperon proteins that's why they called
chaperons you know they help people look
after people and support uh in this case
support cells support neurons and the
other thing they do they also reduce the
amount of this
protein aggregation type phenomena okay
and that's shown on this slide which is
when I saw this data a student showed it
to me first time this is in a an
Alzheimer model a mouse model of alimer
because only humans actually have
Alzheimers no other species on Earth so
we do have to sort of make a mouse out
you give them M arms to be able to study
them to develop therapy so that's an
interesting you know you may not be
aware of so here hopefully you can see
this is before and this is after
treatment you can see the the
staining levels are dropped generally
which is the good that's the stuff we
need to actually Target not these
plaques cuz it's that's a bit of a you
know like I said it's the end of the
process it's not it's a bit of a red
herring but in fact it does reduce the
plaques as well but the important thing
it reduces this ameloid protein quite
dramatically like I said I nearly fell
off my seat when I saw the result of
this okay anyway so that's so it's doing
all the things you want it to do it
ticks all the boxes that I talked about
in terms of Aging obviously you got to
demonstrate that it does something
behaviorally so this was our first study
back in 2008 with my very gifted
colleague down in sundland farmacy
school Abdul uh we did this test this is
a this is a special memory test with our
unique testing system it's actually a
unique system because we can measure
lots of different behaviors all at once
so we save on animals so you know we do
need animals to test things but we
reducing the number of animals we can do
all in one test we could look at memory
motor and anxiety all in the same system
so one set of animals over a long time
can give us results so this experiment
demonstrated with this strange strain of
miles that we accidentally fell upon so
these this is a strain of mouse called
cd1 they're the cheapest that's why we
bought them funding is very important in
research so this was actually the cheap
as stay and it turns out the male
version sorry boys the male version of
this mouth have very poor memory at very
young ages okay there nothing to do with
humans it's just that particular strain
and that was lucky for us so we can then
test whether our treatment would make a
difference and it did basically
converted those mice those old well
premature aged mice middle age mice to a
young Mouse in terms of its memory
performance so again a fall off the seat
moment yeah but it actually made a
difference to memory relevant memory so
you made a clever little mouse so this
is just quick summary of all the effects
so it's really just to emphasize
multiple effects there not a single
Target you know not trying to just mop
up a bit of amalo when it's too late
which is what most of the drugs are
doing at the moment completely not going
to work although huge amounts of money
have been pumped into it complete waste
of money um sorry about that just I know
I mean the Press was quite big on it
recently so I don't want to sort dampen
down your expectations anyway we've got
an alternative now
because as I said it does all these
things tick tick tick tick tick in terms
of things that we want it to do okay the
proof in the the pudding so this is
introducing Gordon who's the one the
very tall South African GP from Peter
Lee that knocked on my door who I met
this morning to pick up this to show you
all and this is abdor with my slightly
grumpy behavioral is he doesn't like to
his photo taken in fact he didn't want
his photo taken for this latest press
release we had he said no way no way
he's very modest he's incredibly bright
guy but he's very mod you can see how
Grump he was for this photo anyway so
this was asked sort of as it was
described Star Wars helmet the Prototype
back in 2008 okay and this is our first
guinea pig anybody recognize the older
members of the audience will recognize
this is Terry pret disworld famous
disworld author he was our first guinea
pig because he contacted us heard about
our research and tried it for the rest
actually he had very severe dementia the
very very quick acting dementia and he
used our helmet throughout the period
and he actually managed to write four
bestsellers after he started I'm not
saying that's n equals one you know
obviously but you know I'm not saying we
made a difference but it certainly he
was very happy to use it
so that's our first so this is the
Prototype now at least the UK version
there's an American version it's a bit
more
snazzy uh but this is the uh actually
the version that was used in our recent
clinical trials for outs patients that
I'm going to show you the data from this
this young lady she like me to say that
this is one of our candidates for our
aging study she doesn't have dementia
but she used it in an aging study we
showed improved memory and sleep even in
you know middle-aged individuals like
myself okay and that was just an eight
that's an 8 to 12 week so the strategy
you use this two twice a day 6 minutes
press the button 6 minutes delivers the
light uh for eight or 12 weeks in our
studies so far okay you don't really
need to understand this but this is you
know you can look at the physiology of
the brain and the effects so I'll put
the arrow here so for example the here
in this Delta power this is the
oscillation the physiology that's
happening in your brains as you listen
to me hopefully yeah these things and
hopefully you'll remember what I'm
saying because of the the action of
these oscillations okay so you can see
here in this case You' gone from a very
cold low activity to a boost in activity
in that particular oscillation and
similarly got other things here we've
gone reduction in activity this is you
don't need to know like I said Delta
coherent reduced that's a sign of
improved attention and memory okay that
indicates okay it's doing something
physiological this is what it's doing
behaviorally which is the most important
thing for you guys to to see so this is
an example of a test an outside of a
patient mild to moderate outside the
patient would have difficulty drawing a
clock you might think that's okay that's
simple thing but actually when you have
Alzheimer's this is the sort of thing
it's difficult to do so this is before
and after I don't really need to show
you the tell describe the difference you
can see it for yourself so it's an
individual five week only five weeks
treatment resulted in that sort of a
Improvement okay the other thing I'm
going to show you in terms of data it's
a very commonly used memory score the
So-Cal minim mental score which is a
memory a classic sort of memory test for
range of memories that and this is the
sort of graph that depicts what happen
so you most of the guys hopefully in the
audience are up here in the 30 to 25 I'm
probably in the
25 dropping being a little bit older
yeah so you go from sort of early
diagnosis 25 so the scale is 25 to zero
okay I mean zero is obviously the end
but so you got mild to moderate and then
severe down here so the drop in number
indicates the you know reduction in
memory performance okay so this is again
I'd fall off the seat moment when I when
my colleagues in America cuz this trial
was done in the US UK didn't want to
know us did it FDA
approved okay so this these two arrows
are just to show you the things to focus
on so this is ladies and gentlemen okay
that's very important it works equally
well which is unusual for a lot of
treatments and therapies okay you can
see very easily by eye a highly
significant increase so in other words
you improved improving your memory
performance and it's nearly
five okay five an increase of five mmse
on a 25 scale it's like taking somebody
from M mod moderate outsid back into
more just you know middle-age levels of
memory okay and that's eight weeks of a
two two six minutes treatment okay
remarkable effect I have to emphasize
this is in a small group relative you
know about 100 patients okay so it's a
really be small pilot study but highly
promising obviously for obvious reason
and the other important thing to bear in
mind no side effects zero we've tried
I've tried very hard because I'm like I
said I'm a skeptical academic I need to
find side effects because no there's no
such thing as side no side effects in
any drug treatments or anything we do
zil Zippo yeah in this treatment so
that's really a really important thing
to bear in mind as
well right out disease apart from just
showing you some
numbers it's quite difficult to show you
you know visually what it you know what
the light does what I want to show you
is in a Parkinson's
individual uh I'm going to show you the
two best communion of all time in my
opinion one of them Billy had has
Parkinson's and uh uh this chap here had
Parkinson's stroke drb and that caused
him to commit suicide a few years we've
only just found out that he he had a
sort of Parkinson's stroke demential
bodies type Robin Williams if you don't
recognize him yeah so the two best
communities of all time anyway uh so I'm
going to try and show you this quick
video because I know I'm reaching the
end of my time I'm hoping I can just
start the video oh yeah okay so what you
got here this is going back to 2012
actually this nine years ago was this
individual treated for 10 weeks he has
Parkinson's as you can see so in the top
panel you'll see him before and then he
the bottom P you see him after 10 weeks
so it may not be so obvious in some of
the early slides because if you don't
know this what you're expecting to see
in Parkinson's it's a bit tricky but you
start to see a difference between him
before and after treatment so here he's
he's basically Flex his but he's notice
his other hand comes up it's like an
automatic reaction whereas here he's
controlled on one hand and nothing
happens on that one and similar he goes
that one you know it's it's more
controlled movement of his hands which
you don't see with Parkinson you see the
Tremor again with the before and
again again you can see much more
controlled finger movements and things
like that these are the sort of things
that you notice there will be a video
it's much more obvious in in a little
while again these are things that you
test somebody with Parkinson to look at
their motor motor skills and how they
project
there so again if you
notice it may not look so obvious but
there's much more control in the in the
guy the same guy after the after the
treatment okay this is the one I don't
need to explain this one this is obvious
you can tell the one that's been treated
and not been
treated yeah I don't need to explain
that
one yeah up and down up and he's going
like the clappers here yeah yeah and
other as opposed to when he was before
it's much
more yeah and then finally we're going
to have a look at the gate I apologize
if I'm going over time but just to show
so again if you watch him walking up and
down he starts they look similar early
on but you'll see as it progresses how
much quicker
and much more active the same chap is
after
treatment
okay it will
come if you be patient if you keep
watching see he's speeding
up and he starts to there we go he's he
can't stop him now basically yeah so
that just gives you a bit of a feel in a
Parkinson's patient cuz actually the
trial we recently published on outs
cases we didn't know but a number of
them were Parkinson's patients with
dementia so they were misdiagnosed and
we've actually got data from those guys
that we're going about to publish
showing basically what you can see on
the screen okay
so it's time to trial this obviously in
the UK like I said we've failed up to
this point for the big two Alzheimer's
and Parkinson initially obviously
there's other scope for other brain
diseases but those are the big two
n
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