NASA LED technology reduces painful effects of cancer treatment

Huntsville, AL--A two-year clinical trial of a NASA technology originally developed for plant growth experiments on space shuttle missions has successfully reduced the painful side effects resulting from chemotherapy and radiation treatment in bone marrow and stem cell transplant patients. The far red/near infrared light-emitting diode (LED) treatment called High Emissivity Aluminiferous Luminescent Substrate, or HEALS, was administered to treat oral mucositis--a common and extremely painful side effect of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The trial concluded that there is a 96% chance that the improvement in pain of those in the high-risk patient group was the result of the HEALS light treatment.

"Using this technology as a healing agent was phenomenal," said Dr. Donna Salzman, clinical trial principal investigator and director of clinical services and education at the Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy Unit at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital. "The HEALS device was well tolerated with no adverse affects to our bone marrow and stem cell transplant patients."

The HEALS device, known as the WARP 75 light delivery system, can provide a cost-effective therapy since the device itself is less expensive than a day at the hospital and a proactive therapy for symptoms of mucositis that are currently difficult to treat without additional, negative side effects.

Ron Ignatius, founder and chairman of Quantum Devices (Barneveld, WI) developed the WARP 75 light delivery system for use in the trial. The device uses the HEALS technology to provide intense light energy: the equivalent light energy of 12 suns from each of the 288 LED chips--each the size of a grain of salt. It is one of many devices using HEALS technology, developed in collaboration with NASA.

In the early 1990s, Quantum teamed with the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics--a NASA-sponsored research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison--to develop Astroculture 3, a plant growth chamber using near infrared HEALS technology for plant growth experiments on shuttle missions. Over the years, Quantum has worked to develop HEALS technology for use in medical fields, specifically with pediatric brain tumors and hard-to-heal wounds such as diabetic skin ulcers, serious burns and oral mucositis.

The clinical trial was funded by NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. It included 20 cancer patients from Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and 60 cancer patients from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital and the Children's Hospital of Alabama, also in Birmingham. Patients participated in the multi-center, double-blind, placebo-controlled research study--a way of testing a medical therapy where some groups receive treatment and others receive a placebo treatment that is designed to have no real effect.

Patients received the light therapy by a nurse holding the WARP 75 device--about the size of an adult human hand--in close proximity to the outside of the patient's left and right cheek and neck area for 88 seconds each, daily for 14 days at the start of the patient's bone marrow or stem cell transplant. During that time, trained clinicians assessed the patient's mouth and patients completed a simple form to indicate their level of pain.

The WARP 75 device is currently undergoing Food and Drug Administration premarket approval.

SOURCE: NASA; www.warp-heals.com/NasaNews.htm