Project description
Slowing down Alzheimer's disease with flashing light
Available treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) are ineffective and fail to halt progressive and irreversible brain damage. Recent evidence indicates that non-invasive flashing light can clear amyloid-beta, one of the key pathogenic hallmarks of AD, and offer neural protection. The EU-funded BRIGHT project will conduct a feasibility study for a novel flickering white light therapy that can stimulate the human visual receptors and processing cortex. The white light forms by combining different coloured LEDs and does not cause fatigue like stroboscopic light. The proposed intervention has the potential to delay disease onset, reduce prevalence and associated costs.
Objective
While Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a global pandemic, it has been estimated that a five-year delay in the disease onset could reduce the disease prevalence – and its costs – by up to 33% over the next decades, representing potential savings over €100bn in EU alone. However, there are still significant roadblocks ahead as current drugs do not untap sizeable improvements in AD patients. This is primarily due to the challenge of minimizing the impact of irreversible brain damage in later dementia stages, which accentuates the need for early intervention. However, recent evidence shows that non-invasive flashing (stroboscopic) light at the appropriate frequency (40 Hz) promotes clearance of beta-amyloid – whose accumulation is believe to be one of the key triggers to the neurodegenerative cascade leading to dementia states.
Instead of using fadigue-inducing stroboscopic flashing light (i.e. on-off), the founding members of OptoCeutics have devised a unique, patent-protected method to stimulate the human visual receptors and processing cortex through alternating white light composed of different wavelengths. The two variants of the white light are formed by different combinations of coloured LEDs. When flickering between the two LED sets, the colours fusion together and appear as one, resulting in approximately the same white colour, avoiding experiencing light flashing, but the brain is capturing the blue component flashing with 40 Hz – thus still promoting neuro-protective beta-amyloid clearance.
OptoCeutics will leverage from BRIGHT as a vital stepping stone to prepare the company’s business strategy, serving also to significantly de-risk its route-to-market by enabling to liaise with major industrial and clinical players to define both the optimal productization and maturation of Optoceutics core technology, as well as the setup for its full-scale demonstration and certification, prior market roll-out.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
1610 KOBENHAVN V
Denmark
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.