Teen Researcher Builds Microgravity Device to Study Faster Wound Healing in Space

Eighteen-year-old Leanne Fan of San Diego built a continuously rotating device that simulates microgravity so researchers can study how wounds heal when tissues experience reduced mechanical loading. Using the device, she tested 660-nanometer red light on injured flatworms and reported a 95.2% increase in tissue regeneration, while experiments with human cells under normal gravity showed a 29.4% increase in cell migration during wound closure. Her project earned sixth place and an $80,000 award in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search.

The Medical Problem Hidden in Long-Duration Spaceflight

A cut or other injury may seem like a routine medical problem on Earth. In space, however, the biology of healing becomes more complicated.

Tissues normally experience mechanical forces associated with gravity. In microgravity, those forces are dramatically reduced, and researchers have found that wound-healing processes can behave differently.

For astronauts undertaking increasingly long missions, that creates an important question: how can the body repair damaged tissue when conventional medical support may be hundreds of thousands or millions of kilometres away?

Leanne Fan approached that problem by building a laboratory system that could reproduce some of the physical conditions associated with microgravity and then testing whether light-based treatment could accelerate tissue repair.

A Device Designed to Recreate Microgravity on Earth

Fan’s project, titled “Photobiomodulation on In Vivo and In Vitro Wound Models Under Simulated Microgravity for Future Space Travel,” uses a continuously rotating apparatus.

The device rotates along two axes. This is designed to prevent gravity from continuously acting on a wound sample in one direction, creating a laboratory approximation of microgravity rather than requiring an experiment to be conducted in orbit.

That distinction matters.

A ground-based simulation cannot reproduce every physical effect of actual spaceflight. But it can provide researchers with a comparatively accessible environment in which biological responses can be studied before experiments are attempted in space.

For a student researcher, the device effectively became a miniature experimental platform for asking how tissue regeneration changes when gravitational loading is altered.

Red Light Becomes the Next Variable

Fan paired the simulated microgravity environment with photobiomodulation, a technique that uses specific wavelengths of light to influence biological processes.

Her experiment used 660-nanometer red light to treat injured flatworms exposed to the simulated microgravity conditions.

The results reported by Society for Science were striking: red-light treatment accelerated tissue regeneration by 95.2% in the injured flatworm model.

The result does not establish that the same treatment would produce a 95.2% improvement in astronauts.

Flatworms are an experimental model, and biological responses can differ substantially between organisms.

Instead, the experiment provides evidence that photobiomodulation is worth investigating further as a possible approach to countering some of the effects of reduced gravity on wound repair.

The Research Then Moved to Human Cells

Fan did not stop with the flatworm experiment.

She also tested red-light treatment using human-cell wound models under normal gravity conditions.

In those experiments, she found that the treatment increased cell migration during wound closure by 29.4%.

Cell migration is an important component of wound repair because cells need to move into damaged areas as tissue closes.

The human-cell experiment therefore provided a second biological system for examining the effects of the light treatment.

However, it is important to distinguish this result from a clinical study. Cultured human cells are not the same as an injured human body, and the experiment does not demonstrate that the treatment is ready for use in patients or astronauts.

Why Simulated Microgravity Matters

Actual microgravity experiments are technically demanding and expensive.

Researchers can use spacecraft, parabolic flights, drop towers and specialized laboratory systems to study reduced-gravity environments, but access to those platforms is limited.

A rotating ground-based device offers another route.

Researchers can alter experimental conditions, repeat measurements and compare treated and untreated samples without sending every experiment into orbit.

Fan’s approach therefore addresses two problems at once: the biological question of wound healing and the practical problem of creating a laboratory environment in which that question can be studied.

A Potential Tool for Future Space Medicine

The long-term motivation behind the research is human spaceflight.

Future missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond could expose astronauts to environments where medical evacuation is impossible and supplies cannot be rapidly replaced.

A wound that would be relatively manageable on Earth could become more difficult when healing itself is affected by the space environment.

Fan’s work suggests a possible research pathway in which photobiomodulation could be investigated as a non-invasive method for supporting tissue repair during space missions.

But that possibility remains a research hypothesis rather than an established medical application.

Before such a treatment could be considered for astronauts, researchers would need to determine its effectiveness under actual spaceflight conditions and evaluate dosage, safety, biological mechanisms and long-term effects.

The Same Research Could Have Applications on Earth

The project is not limited to astronauts.

Society for Science notes that Fan’s work could potentially contribute to wound-treatment approaches in remote locations, disaster environments and other settings where access to medical care is limited.

That possibility comes from the basic characteristics of photobiomodulation.

If further research establishes that specific light wavelengths can reliably influence tissue repair, relatively compact light-based systems could potentially be useful where conventional medical infrastructure is difficult to access.

Again, this is a potential application rather than a demonstrated clinical outcome from Fan’s project.

From a Student Project to a National Science Award

Fan’s research earned her sixth place and $80,000 in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search.

The competition recognized 40 finalists for research across mathematics, biology, physics, engineering, computer science and other scientific fields.

Fan, 18, attends Westview High School in San Diego, California.

Her project also builds on several years of interest in biomedical technology. Society for Science notes that she previously worked on a project involving headphones designed to detect bacterial ear infections using artificial intelligence and treat them with blue light.

Her current research takes that interest in light-based biological intervention into a very different environment: space.

Why the Experiment Is Interesting Beyond the Prize

The most important part of Fan’s project is not simply the award or the fact that the device was built by a high-school student.

It is the way the experiment connects several scientific problems.

Microgravity changes the physical environment surrounding biological tissues.

Wound healing provides a measurable biological response.

Photobiomodulation offers a possible intervention.

And the rotating device provides a way to bring the spaceflight condition into a terrestrial laboratory.

That creates a compact research system in which a space-medicine question can be investigated through biological experiments on Earth.

What Comes Next

The results provide an early experimental signal, not a finished treatment.

The reported improvements in flatworm regeneration and human-cell migration need to be independently reproduced and investigated in more complex biological models.

Future studies would also need to establish whether photobiomodulation works under genuine microgravity and determine which biological pathways are responsible for the observed effects.

If those findings hold up, the research could eventually contribute to technologies designed to support wound care during long-duration missions.

For now, Fan’s device demonstrates something more immediate: a space-medicine problem can be brought down to Earth and turned into a controlled laboratory experiment.

That is what makes the project scientifically interesting—not that it has already solved wound healing in space, but that it provides a practical way to investigate one of the biological challenges future astronauts may face.

FAQs

What did Leanne Fan build?

She built a continuously rotating device that uses two-axis rotation to simulate aspects of microgravity for studying wound healing.

What did the microgravity experiment find?

In injured flatworms under simulated microgravity, 660-nanometer red-light treatment was reported to accelerate tissue regeneration by 95.2%.

Did Leanne Fan test the treatment on human cells?

Yes. Human-cell wound models were used under normal gravity, where red-light treatment increased cell migration during wound closure by 29.4%.

Can red light currently treat wounds in astronauts?

No. Fan’s findings are experimental and require further validation. The research does not establish an approved treatment for astronauts or patients.

What award did Leanne Fan receive?

Fan received sixth place and an $80,000 award in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search.