Oct 6, 2026 · 49 min · 9 segments
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Dalton BrothersGuestOI Show HostHostSo back us up for a second.
The LightSight trial, uh, bring everybody up to speed.
What is that? What, what, what is that?
So the LightSight trials was a series of three trials that were, um, that were recently funded, and they were published at the...
The, the final capstone one was published at the end of 2024, and these were based off of work that was done and published back in 2016 by a, uh, Dr. Mary, I believe it was, at the time.
And he was one of the first ones that showed functional and anatomical improvements in macular degeneration patients using light-based therapy.
And I believe in, even in his, he even kind of credited some previous case reports that showed it was something that was, the theories were possible.
But prior to this, the only types of improvement that they had noticed in some of these conditions was actually in animal models.
Hmm.
And the only reason that they even found those is because they were worried up until a certain point of saying, "How much light is possible before you end up with a damaging level of it?" And so-
Hmm
... for decades, whenever patients were undergoing some of these light-based therapy techniques, they had goggles on because they didn't wanna cause any damage to the retina.
And in the early 2000s, whenever they started to ask that question of saying, "How much light is too much light?" They came across using animal models of, for different vari- you know, various conditions such as macular degeneration, and optic nerve issues, and glaucoma issues, and all these traumatic issues.
And they did find that if you didn't have enough light that was present, you didn't have a response that would take place in a cell.
Mm-hmm.
They also found what they were looking for is that if you put too much light in that space, you either got no effect or a negative outcome.
But what they didn't really expect is there was an entire range between those two points, of which conditions that should only be irreversible and should only be going in one direction, such as macular degeneration, they were seeing some of the improvements, not just in the function, but also in the structure in animal models.
And so Dr. Mary compiled some of those results and ended up doing one of the landmark kind of like initial trials with this, where he did it with human patients and actually noticed a lot of the similar results.
And over a period of about three weeks of treatments, and over a period of now six months, we're finding that some of the patients had an improvement in visual acuity.
And for those that may not know this, is that visual acuities is one of the gold standards of measuring and monitoring macular degeneration, because it only historically goes in one direction.
Mm-hmm.
Even if you did have some fluctuation that could happen with drusen, it was...
You wouldn't expect most 20/40 macular degeneration patients to ever go back down to 20/30 or 20/25 on future exams.
And so to see a visual acuity improvement, regardless of, of source, was a pretty, a, a pretty large dramatic change.
So back us up for a second.
The LightSight trial, uh, bring everybody up to speed.
What is that? What, what, what is that?
So the LightSight trials was a series of three trials that were, um, that were recently funded, and they were published at the...
The, the final capstone one was published at the end of 2024, and these were based off of work that was done and published back in 2016 by a, uh, Dr. Mary, I believe it was, at the time.
And he was one of the first ones that showed functional and anatomical improvements in macular degeneration patients using light-based therapy.
And I believe in, even in his, he even kind of credited some previous case reports that showed it was something that was, the theories were possible.
But prior to this, the only types of improvement that they had noticed in some of these conditions was actually in animal models.
Hmm.
And the only reason that they even found those is because they were worried up until a certain point of saying, "How much light is possible before you end up with a damaging level of it?" And so-
Hmm
... for decades, whenever patients were undergoing some of these light-based therapy techniques, they had goggles on because they didn't wanna cause any damage to the retina.
And in the early 2000s, whenever they started to ask that question of saying, "How much light is too much light?" They came across using animal models of, for different vari- you know, various conditions such as macular degeneration, and optic nerve issues, and glaucoma issues, and all these traumatic issues.
And they did find that if you didn't have enough light that was present, you didn't have a response that would take place in a cell.
Mm-hmm.
They also found what they were looking for is that if you put too much light in that space, you either got no effect or a negative outcome.
But what they didn't really expect is there was an entire range between those two points, of which conditions that should only be irreversible and should only be going in one direction, such as macular degeneration, they were seeing some of the improvements, not just in the function, but also in the structure in animal models.
And so Dr. Mary compiled some of those results and ended up doing one of the landmark kind of like initial trials with this, where he did it with human patients and actually noticed a lot of the similar results.
And over a period of about three weeks of treatments, and over a period of now six months, we're finding that some of the patients had an improvement in visual acuity.
And for those that may not know this, is that visual acuities is one of the gold standards of measuring and monitoring macular degeneration, because it only historically goes in one direction.
Mm-hmm.
Even if you did have some fluctuation that could happen with drusen, it was...
You wouldn't expect most 20/40 macular degeneration patients to ever go back down to 20/30 or 20/25 on future exams.
And so to see a visual acuity improvement, regardless of, of source, was a pretty, a, a pretty large dramatic change.
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