Twenty-five percent of extremity combat wounds are long bone fractures, often with complex pathologies that pose a continuing challenge to successful fracture healing. These fractures are often associated with lacerated soft tissue or an open wound and, as such, are prone to infection, which further negatively impacts bone healing. Despite currently available treatments to reduce the risk of infection and/or enhance bone healing, high impact traumatic fractures can take up to a year to fully heal with some injuries going on to non-union, potentially leading to repetitive surgeries and long term disability of the injured patient. This proposal presents an exciting new approach to improve healing in complex skeletal injuries through the combined use of a drug light therapeutic methodology, photodynamic therapy (PDT). PDT is a non-surgical, minimally invasive local treatment, which involves the local or intra-venous administration of a photosensitizing drug, which is activated by laser light. Unexpectedly, recent findings from studies aimed at understanding the impact of PDT on bone metastases secondary to breast cancer have shown that PDT rapidly improved vertebral bone strength, stiffness, and architecture. PDT has further been shown recently to reduce bacterial growth within bone in a preclinical model of infected bone. Based on these observations, this study proposes to explore the potential of PDT to enhance healing in traumatic long bone fractures with and without infection.