REGEnLIFE Is Trying to Prove That Advanced Light Therapy Can Cure Alzheimer’s
A team of scientists in France is working on a promising clinical trial that uses photobiomodulation (a form of light therapy) to reduce inflammation in the brain and the gut simultaneously. They posit that this safe, non-invasive therapy could treat Alzheimer’s.
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Light Therapy
If you Google “light therapy” you’re going to find a thousand products promising everything from muscle relaxation to glowing skin to improved sleep. The market has been so flooded by these low-cost, unverified wellness devices (Temu sells one for under $10) that it’s partially obscured the larger story.
There are several legitimate applications of light therapy. One is called photobiomodulation, or PBM. It’s not just for helping your skin glow (which, according to the Cleveland Clinic, it can do by improving circulation). Decades of research, including headline-grabbing experiments involving astronauts in space, have shown the impressive therapeutic benefits of exposure to red or near-infrared light. It turns out that when done right, PBM triggers multiple phenomena at the cellular level, in the hard-working mitochondria, that lead to increased oxygen consumption, increased cell energy, release of nitric oxide, and other good things. Functionally, that means it can reduce pain, reduce inflammation, and speed up healing.
So, we know that these red and near-infrared lights have therapeutic powers and basically no downside. The next question is where and how to use them. Early use cases have been in dermatology, where the therapy has been FDA approved for more than 20 years, because shining a light on the outer surface of the skin is easy. But what if we were just scratching the surface on the applications of photobiomodulation?
Origin Story
Enter Guillaume Blivet, a serial med tech executive living and working in the south of France.
Blivet spent the early decades of his career working across a range of healthcare and medical device companies. One venture brought him to a dermatology conference and he found himself talking to physicians about their use of PBM therapy. He heard stories about PBM’s healing properties that amazed him, and he heard about physicians experimenting with “off label” uses as well, with positive results.
“I was amazed and interested in the efficacy results which were reported on patients – skin diseases and more,” says Blivet.
He dove into the research, curious if the anti-inflammatory, pain relieving, healing properties of PBM could be applied to other ailments and conditions. After all, with a mechanism of action deep in the mitochondria, the cell energy core, it made sense there could be additional benefits.
Blivet read about the first studies about PBM and neuroscience, and he began thinking about potential applications for brain diseases. Could PBM be effectively used to treat or even cure Alzheimer's? How could the therapeutic effect be enhanced for brain conditions?
It was a massive moonshot-sized question, with global implications, and Blivet was hooked.
Under the Hood
First Blivet gathered a team around him who were experts in neurodegenerative diseases, physics, and engineering, including Prof. Jacques Touchon, chairman of the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD).
The first hurdle was to design a non-invasive, deep-penetrating PBM device to pave the way for a new treatment. They needed to reach the right regions of the brain with the PBM therapy, so they developed their own optical configuration, including lasers. They ran into the challenge that human hair reflects light, so they built optical guides to cross the hairs and reach the scalp directly. They packaged it all in an ergonomic modular helmet that guaranteed the best delivery and dose of light from the scalp to the brain.
With a prototype – and a grant from the French government – in hand, they moved on to mouse studies. What made these studies unique was that Blivet and his team didn’t just target the brain; they also delivered PBM therapy to the gut. Because of the deep connection between the gut and the brain, called the gut-brain axis, and because both the brain and the gut suffer from a range of conditions tied to inflammation, the team believed this dual approach could increase efficacy.
“I told myself, if the gut plays a role in Alzheimer’s, we could target both non-invasively and have a supplementary chance to treat the disease,” says Blivet. “We discovered a synergy with the brain and the gut that did increase the therapeutic efficacy.”
They were right, at least in mice. Their brain-gut application demonstrated better efficacy compared to the brain-only or the gut-only application. The results were strong, showing a normalization of short-term memory, long-term memory, Alzheimer’s biomarkers, and also improvement in inflammation biomarkers. When they presented the results in academic settings, it started to get attention, and they were able to raise funds for a first-in-human trial with 64 participants.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, shutting down in-person clinical trials. REGEnLIFE had to reduce the size of the trial. But even with these setbacks, and a short treatment period (two months), the results were strong enough, and the efficacy trend clear enough, to warrant a pivotal trial over a longer treatment period (six months).
Next Steps
Today, we’re proud to welcome REGEnLIFE into StartUp Health’s Alzheimer’s Moonshot as they embark on this next phase of their entrepreneurial journey. Their current clinical trial on mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s patients will take until mid-2026 to show results. In the meantime the team is working on CE Mark approval for their first medical device to treat acute symptoms of concussion in the EU using PBM.
It’s an incredibly exciting step into the unknown. And if their work on these neurotech applications of PBM prove out the way they believe it will – the way their body of research suggests it can – REGEnLIFE could offer hope to millions of people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases.
Connect with REGEnLIFE via email
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Published: Oct 31, 2024