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Healing With Light (NASA, 03/03/11)

Editor's note: great story we posted today about how a NASA light technology, originally developed for plant growth experiments in space, is being used to reduce the side effects of various medical treatments, including those for cancer, wounds, etc. You can read more about the technology here: www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/heals.html. I love success stories like this!

 

Special High Emissivity Aluminiferous Luminescent Substrate, or HEALS technology developed for NASA's commercial plant growth experiments in space is helping to treat cancer and save lives on Earth. NASA has partnered with Quantum Devices Inc. (QDI) of Barneveld Wis., to develop the WARP 75 light delivery system device for wound healing. A two-year clinical trial using the WARP 75 device on cancer patients undergoing bone marrow or stem cell transplants, concluded that there was a 96-percent chance that the improvement in pain relief of those in the high-risk patient group was the result of the HEALS treatment. The clinical trial was funded by NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The NASA program works with industry and commercial partners to spinoff space technology and adapt it for new, innovative applications.

 

Image credit: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham

 

View more images:

www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/heals_photos.html

 

Watch a video of HEALS in action:

www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=...

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Uploaded on March 4, 2011
Taken on June 24, 2010