We are conditioned by Hollywood to regard lasers as destructive tools, so biotech company Theralase Technologies Inc’s (CVE:TLT) reliance on the technology seems a little strange.
Stop and think for a second and most of us can come up with at least one example where the technology can be used as a curative: how about laser eye surgery?
Theralase, however, does not manufacture lasers for laser eye surgery. It designs and manufactures lasers to successfully treat nerve, muscle and joint conditions, in order to help patients eliminate their pain, reduce inflammation and dramatically accelerate healing of their tissue.
That was not the sort of operation Goldfinger had in mind when he had James Bond strapped to a table with a laser positioned to split his personalities, so to speak, so what gives?
Cold laser technology
If it is any consolation, Roger Dumoulin-White, founder, president and chief executive of Theralase, was equally sceptical when he first came across this revolutionary cold laser technology, back in the early nineties.
He was visiting his parents when his father started enthusing about some inventor he had met and some technology he had seen while travelling in Belgium.
Dumoulin-White thought his old man was finally losing his marbles, as his father expounded on the therapeutic properties of an invisible laser you could not see and could not feel.
It was not until his father produced a short article that partially explained how the technology affected tissue that Dumoulin-White became genuinely interested.
So interested, in fact, that he completed his due diligence, flew to Brussels, talked to the inventor, the scientists and the doctors that he worked with and bought the worldwide exclusive rights to the technology. He flew back home and promptly resigned from his high-powered senior manager position with the electronics division of Ford Motor Company and started Theralase from scratch.
At which point, it was probably his father's turn to wonder whether his son had lost his marbles, but with Theralase now a public company valued at more than C$40mln and with technology that could utterly transform the lives of millions of people for the better, the Ford Motor Company's loss has been society's gain.
Yes, I hear you cry, eliminating pain and healing tissue is a worthy mission but how is that utterly transforming the lives of millions of people?
Well, that's because Theralase has another arrow in its quiver; its laser technology is able to activate light-sensitive Photo Dynamic Compounds (PDCs) that have an attraction to cancer cells and are able to destroy them when light activated, all without that nasty business involving chemotherapy, radiation or invasive surgery.
Pretty cool, eh?
Developments on the cancer front have largely been providing the share price catalysts for Theralase of late, and there is a danger that all the “jam tomorrow” euphoria of the company's PDC work could overshadow the company's current breadwinner, its US FDA-cleared commercial cool laser technology.
So, let's examine the medtech side of the business first – Therapeutic Laser Technology (TLT) - before getting on to the sexy and frankly awe-inspiring cancer treating Photo Dynamic Therapy (PDT) division.
Therapeutic laser technology gets under your skin
The science behind TLT is on the complicated side and, like radio waves to the uninitiated, can seem akin to magic; however, just like you need to tune into a particular wavelength to pick up radio waves and hear your favourite song – kids, ask your Dad what a radio is at this point – so cool laser technology can produce laser light at specific wavelengths to penetrate deep into tissue and activate chromophores (light sensitive proteins) that transform light energy into biochemical energy and accelerate the natural healing processes in tissue.
Now, the Star Trek fans have suddenly perked up at the mention of photons, and indeed the hand-held devices do resemble something that Dr “Bones” McCoy would run over a patient.
I can hear him saying: “It's light, Jim, but not as we know it” or "Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor not a magician.”
The latest next generation technology of Theralase even has CellSensing technology, which can automatically locate injured tissue and deliver an exact dose of energy to optimally heal it.
Now that’s cool. No pun intended.
Proven clinically to be effective in blinded, randomized clinical trials (the gold standard in the medical industry) to eliminate pain, reduce inflammation and accelerate tissue healing, it has over a 90% success rate in healing nerve, muscle and joint conditions.
As hinted above, that may not seem as earth-shattering as treating cancer, but the US pain market is worth more than US$100bn annually and growing rapidly, so it is nothing to sneeze at.
The new technology is highly effective for patients and profitable for healthcare practitioners, who will quickly earn a return on their investment – 2,000% as evidenced by Theralase’s installed base of products.
Theralase is targeting annual revenues of C$50mln a year within five years of launch. To put that into perspective, the previous therapeutic laser business generated C$2mln a year in 2015. Now that’s growth.
Combating the big C
The new product should keep the company moving forward as it builds up its PDT division.
In a nutshell, PDT is a treatment that uses a drug, called a PDC, activated by a specific wavelength of light. The light’s role in the process is to stimulate the PDCs, once inside the cancer cell, to produce a reactive form of oxygen that kills the cancer cell from the inside out.
Each PDC is activated by light of a specific wavelength, and this wavelength also determines how far the light can travel into the body, thus enabling doctors to use specific PDCs coupled with specific wavelengths of light to treat different areas of the body inflicted with specific cancers.
The treatment is, literally, laser-guided, which means only cancerous cells are targeted and destroyed, and according to published pre-clinical research , the treatment is close to being 100% effective.
On top of that, there is no toxicity involved in the treatment and no side effects.
“It destroys the primary tumour and empowers the immune system to prevent the recurrence of the disease, which is the so-called Holy Grail of cancer treatment”, stated Dumoulin-White.
Initially, the company will be targeting treatment of Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (NMIBC), where the disease recurrence rate is depressingly high 80%, and where there have been no breakthrough developments in the last 20 years, despite it being the fifth most common type of cancer.
Later this year, the technology will be directed towards other behemoths in the Big C area: specifically, lung cancer and brain cancer.
The wheels are already in motion to develop the technology and get the necessary regulatory approvals, as the company has signed a clinical research agreement with Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network (UHN), one of the top three research cancer institutes in the world, to conduct a phase Ib clinical study for the indication of NMIBC.
The technology is potentially of the blockbuster variety, but unlike most companies with a “jam tomorrow” product, Theralase already has a proven technology out in the field earning its corn, with growth prospects that should not be overlooked.
--UPDATED FOR INTERIMS--