Biophotons are light particles that carry information, sharing the same characteristics as laser light. According to the world's leading expert, biophysicist Prof. Fritz Albert Popp, they regulate the growth and regeneration of cells and control all biochemical processes.

Biophotons remain, even today, a great mystery to science; they are interpreted by two rather different and complementary theories: wave theory (governed by the laws of waves) and corpuscular theory (based on the laws of particle physics).

The first to theorise the presence of photons produced by living organisms (biophotons) was, in 1922, the Russian biologist Gurwitsch, who concluded that they must belong to the ultraviolet wavelength band.

In Italy, the biologist Protti carried out important and original studies, particularly on blood and cancerous tissues, finding that biophoton emission was directly proportional to the vitality of the subject, that in the presence of leukaemia the blood showed very low biophoton emissions, and that the oncolytic power of the blood (that is, its ability to combat cancerous cells) was proportional to the number of photons emitted.

The introduction into nuclear physics of a highly sensitive new light detector, the photomultiplier tube, allowed the first rigorous experimental confirmation by a physicist: Professor Facchini of the University of Milan. Into this area fits the original thesis research by Morpurgo, in which, through the use of a luminometer built by Dr Motolese, it was demonstrated that even the simplest existing organisms — bacteria — emit biophotons, and that there was a close relationship between cell division and biophoton emission, confirming a key role for DNA in this emission phenomenon.

Today biophotons are the subject of various research projects around the world. In the United States it has been demonstrated that the cutaneous points corresponding to acupuncture points emit more biophotons than the rest of the skin.

The possible applications of biophoton measurements are many, ranging from verifying the quality of foodstuffs to monitoring the germination capacity of seeds, pharmacological and toxicological analyses, and the early diagnosis of pathological conditions.

Among the topics under investigation, of particular interest is the property of tumours — as sites of increased cell reproduction — to emit a large number of biophotons, and consequently the possibility of diagnosing a tumour well in advance of traditional methods, using a system that is, moreover, entirely non-invasive.