navy seal divers are the bestat what they do. but they have a problem that limits their abilityto do their mission. our research focusedon solving the problem and it led to an unexpectedpath of discovery for neurological diseases and cancer. the problem resultsfrom the specialized equipment that the navy seal divers use, including the oxygen rebreather.
the advantage of the rebreatheris that there are no bubbles so it's very quiet and helps the sealevade detection from the enemy. the disadvantage of the oxygen rebreather is that the high levels of oxygen and the pressurefrom the undersea environment causes a potential for a seizure. these seizures occurwith little or no warning and there is no effectivemitigation strategy to prevent them.
so the question we ask iswhy do the seizures occur and how can we prevent them. to answer this question required funding from the office of naval research to develop a microscope that was installed inside a hyperbaric chamber, or a high-pressure chamber. this chamber could simulatethe underwater environment and the pressureof the underwater environment.
using this technology we demonstratedthat neurons in the brain, when subjected to high pressureand high oxygen, are overstimulated. the overstimulation of the brain from the high oxygen and pressure causes a decreasein brain energy metabolism. when this happens, it causes the potential for a seizure.
these oxygen seizures occurwith little or no warning and there is no effective wayto prevent them. these drug resistant seizures are similar to epilepsy patients that have drug resistant seizures, and in the case of patients they can use a special dietto prevent these seizures. one example of the patientwho used diet is mike dancer. mike used a variety of antiseizuremedication,
and the medication causedsevere side effects and was not able to control his seizures. so, due to the severe side effects mike stoppedall the antiseizure medication and when he did it, he saw an increase in his seizure frequency. at about this time mike discovered there was is a dietary intervention, that he could use to control his seizures.
and when he did it,he found a sharp decrease i'm happy to say that mikehas been on the diet for 5 years now, and he's been managing his epilepsy for 5 years without medication. so what is the ketogenic diet? compared to a normal diet, the ketogenic dietis very low in carbohydrates and it's very high in fat.
people have used the diet for years to help them regulate their body weight, reduce their body weight, and control or reducetheir blood glucose levels. but most importantly, the ketogenic diet is provento control seizures, when drugs fail. no organization has done moreto educate the public about therapeutic potentialof the ketogenic diet
than the charlie foundation started by hollywood producerjim abrahams. jim's son charliewas stricken with seizures. they were so severe and no amount of drugs could help him. so jim looked into alternative approaches to manage his son's seizures. and with his research he discovered that the ketogenic diet was being used
at johns hopkins hospital, so it was a treatment that was used specifically for pediatric epilepsy. so jim took charlieto johns hopkins hospital and they worked pretty closelywith a dietician there, and within a short amount of time charlie's seizures were under control. and charlie was actuallycured of his epilepsy at johns hopkins hospital
with the use of the ketogenic diet. so charlie is actually off the dietcompletely today, and he remains seizure-free. the ketogenic diet is effective for a variety of neurological disorders including glucose transportertype 1 deficiency syndrome. children with this disorder lack the ability to transportglucose into the brain. so their brains are literallystarved of glucose
and this causes a potential for seizures. so it's known that, you know, the brain can use glucoseas the primary fuel, but it can readily adaptto using ketones for energy. so in this way the brainis like a hybrid engine, right? so it uses glucose as the primary fuel but during periodsof limited glucose availability the brain can readily adapt to using this alternative fuel source.
so we are exploitingthe neuroprotective effects of ketones by developing ketone supplementsfor the navy seal divers for oxygen seizures. so the advantageof the ketone supplement is that you can circumventthe need for the dietary restriction that's required to elevate and sustain blood levels of ketones. there are many therapeuticapplications of ketones because nearly all healthy cells in a body
can use ketones for fuelas an alternative energy source. surprisingly, cancer cellslack the ability to transition from using glucose for fuelto using ketones. so, in a way, cancer cells are likedamaged hybrid engines. they use large amounts of glucose much more than healthy cells, and they lack this abilityto transition over to an alternative fuel source. so we can say that "sugar addiction"
is really the achilles heelof cancer cells. this observation inspired me in the lab, and i asked a question, i wondered, why very little attentionwas being given to nutrition to exploit this weakness of cancer cells. so, it turns out that the sugar addiction was actually observed over 80 years agoby otto warburg. so, otto warburg did experiments, he won a nobel prizefor these experiments,
demonstrating that [cancer] cellsare damaged in their metabolism and the damage in their metabolism results in high amounts of sugar uptake. more recently, thomas seyfriedfrom boston college has been a pioneer, really,in validating warburg's hypothesis and proving that canceris a metabolic disease. in tom's experiments, he demonstrated that there is a specific, metabolic defect of cancer cellsas glucose dependency,
and that we can target that with a variety of non-toxicalternative approaches. oncologists target this weaknessin cancer cells, which is excess glucose consumption, with something called a fgd-pet scan. the pet scan actually shows the excess consumptionof glucose in cancer cells relative to the healthy tissuessurrounding it. so this allows for the imagingof excess glucose consumption
that oncologists use. but this information really isn't used to exploit the cancerfor a treatment modality. the excess glucose consumptionof cancer cells allows them to thrive and proliferate in a low oxygen environment. another interesting observationthat we made in the lab is that high pressures of oxygen are actually damaging to cancer cells.
we've demonstrated that when high levels of oxygenare given to cancer cells that they overproduceoxygen free radicals, and these are damagingto the cell membrane. at high magnification we can observe bumps on the surface of the membrane that are indicative of membrane damage. what's most interesting isthat the same level of oxygen that damaged the cancer cells
was non-toxic to the healthy brain cells. these observations inspired us to test the combination of the ketogenic dietand hyperbaric oxygen in a mouse model of metastatic cancer. the glowing regions on the screen, show the growth and the spread of metastatic cancer cells. this study demonstratedthe therapeutic efficacy of a new, non-toxic, alternative approach
to cancer management. so what started outas a navy seal project and then led to a promisingmitigation strategy for the oxygen seizures in the form of ketone supplements ultimately led us down a path to this unexpected discovery. so the question is, can we manage cancerwith non-toxic strategies?
i believe that we can. and i've been inspired by a number of seizure patientsand cancer patients that have used these alternative methods to manage their incurable diseases. future treatments and preventionof many diseases may fall back on the ancientwisdom of hippocrates, when he said, "let food be thy medicine." thank you.
(applause)
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