Explore how NASA uses light therapy to support astronauts' health and well-being during space missions.
In 1993, Quantum Devices, Inc. (QDI) of Barneveld, Wisconsin, began developing HEALS (High Emissivity Aluminiferous Light-emitting Substrate) technology—high-intensity, solid-state LED lighting systems for NASA Space Shuttle plant-growth experiments. The company emerged from collaboration with the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics (WCSAR) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a NASA center for the Commercial Development of Space. Ronald W. Ignatius, QDI’s president and chairman, was then one of WCSAR’s industrial partners. WCSAR was studying light sources that could promote food production in closed environments where humans would live for extended periods, such as the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.
With WCSAR support, Ignatius experimented with LEDs, which offer high energy efficiency and emit almost no heat while producing light up to ten times brighter than sunlight. Some project scientists were initially skeptical that LEDs could foster plant growth, but tests showed that red wavelengths can enhance cellular energy metabolism, accelerating photosynthesis. This finding led Ignatius to create LED products that deliver the specific wavelengths plants use for photosynthesis.
“Our company credits Dr. Ray Bula, then director of WCSAR, for having the foresight to challenge the prevailing dogma and design the first plant experiment to grow lettuce under monochromatic light,” Ignatius notes.
Ignatius founded QDI in 1989 to commercialize salt-grain-sized LEDs. In October 1995, the lights debuted in space aboard the second U.S. Microgravity Laboratory Spacelab mission (STS-73, Columbia).
After NASA confirmed that red LEDs could sustain plant growth in orbit, Marshall Space Flight Center awarded QDI several Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts from 1995 to 1998 to explore broad-spectrum diodes for medical use. The goal was to boost cellular energy in humans, potentially countering bone and muscle loss experienced by astronauts during long-duration weightlessness. Because wounds heal slowly in microgravity, LED therapy might also accelerate tissue repair, preventing minor injuries from becoming mission-threatening.
In addition to promoting cell growth, red LEDs can activate light-sensitive, tumor-treating drugs that, once injected intravenously, may destroy cancer cells while largely sparing surrounding tissue. This approach, cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for laboratory and human studies, is called photodynamic therapy.
With NASA SBIR support, QDI modified a surgical probe to emit long-wave red light and activate the benzoporphyrin-derivative drug Photofrin, which is associated with fewer post-operative side effects than some alternatives. Ignatius also began collaborating with Dr. Harry Whelan, professor of pediatric neurology and director of hyperbaric medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. After reading about Whelan’s laser-activated drug work, Ignatius allocated more than $1.25 million of QDI’s SBIR funds to advance Whelan’s photobiomodulation research and refine the probe.
Together, Ignatius, Whelan, and NASA investigators adapted the device for pediatric brain tumors and for preventing oral mucositis—a common chemotherapy and radiation side effect—in children undergoing bone-marrow transplantation at the Medical College of Wisconsin. In May 1998, a 20-year-old woman became the first patient to be treated with the modified probe. After six prior brain surgeries and years of chemotherapy and radiation, her aggressive tumor had kept recurring. With standard options exhausted, she consented to the NASA-supported photodynamic procedure.
Surgeons resected as much tumor as possible, injected Photofrin, and positioned the LED probe in the residual tissue. The probe’s long wavelengths generate minimal heat and penetrate deeper than shorter-wavelength medical lasers. The tumor did not recur, and the patient recovered without complications. A second procedure three months later in a male patient was also reported successful by Whelan’s team.
FDA official site NICHD research overview
Clinical studies continued at several facilities over the next three years, including Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York; Rush-Presbyterian–St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago; and the Instituto de Oncologia Pediatrica in São Paulo, Brazil. QDI was later recognized as a U.S. Space Foundation “Space Technology Hall of Fame” inductee in 2000 and received the Marshall Space Flight Center “Hallmark of Success” award in 2004.
Positive trial results, together with ongoing NASA support and follow-on grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, enabled QDI and the Medical College of Wisconsin to adapt the space technology into a non-invasive device. The WARP 10 (Warfighter Accelerated Recovery by Photobiomodulation) is a high-intensity, hand-held, portable LED unit intended for the temporary relief of minor muscle and joint pain, arthritis, stiffness, and muscle spasms. It may also promote muscle relaxation and increase local blood circulation. Unlike the surgical probe, the WARP 10 requires no intravenous medication; the unit is simply placed on the skin at the treatment site.
Developed to help frontline armed forces personnel manage minor injuries and pain, the “soldier self-care” device delivers roughly 80 times more photon energy than a 250-W heat lamp while staying cool to the touch. This output shortens treatment time and allows repeated doses without exposing tissue to harmful ultraviolet radiation. The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy currently issue WARP 10 units to submarine crews and Special Forces teams.
QDI has released an FDA-cleared consumer version that offers the same output as the military model, providing a potential alternative to long-term NSAID use for persistent pain. A Mayo Clinic review notes that adverse events linked to NSAIDs are among the most frequently reported to the FDA. Conservative U.S. estimates suggest about 107,000 hospitalizations and at least 16,500 deaths each year among arthritis patients are related to NSAID-associated gastrointestinal complications.
Mayo Clinic drug-safety overview
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