In the small community of Port Gamble, where gorgeous views of the Hood Canal and the tiny but very picturesque “downtown” are popular with tourists, a relatively low-key company known as EM-PROBE Technologies is getting ready to infuse a few million dollars into expanding its operations.

The company, which is very likely Kitsap’s only biotech firm, has been officially in operation since 2001 and became profitable at the end of last year — not bad for a startup.

Glen Gordon, MD, a retired Silverdale doctor who practiced general medicine and later sports medicine in several areas, says he was comfortably retired but could not give up 25 years of research that produced a device called EMpulse.

With a personal capital investment of $250,000 and with the help of a small group of scientists, Gordon incorporated the company in 2002 and today is at the helm of a corporation worth $10 million. A $6 million investment is planned for the near future to hire new staff and find a new facility for fulfillment, administration, customer service and research and development.

“We have a lot of hope for the future of this technology,” Gordon says.

The firm’s nanosecond technology consists of a 3.5-ounce device that produces a specifically designed electromagnetic pulse to help stimulate healing. It is small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and can be operated by batteries, electricity, or via a car cigarette lighter adapter. It works by correcting the alignment of free radicals and antioxidants; when properly aligned, the antioxidants neutralize free radicals that control pain and expand injury and illness, according to company literature.

The EMpulse is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as an infrared device and can be sold over the counter. Various off-label uses from headaches to depression can be also applied under the care of a physician. Gordon says it has no known side-effects, and has been used in Europe for decades but only recently has been more widely considered in the United States. After knowing about its potential for years, Gordon said his team simply could not ignore the importance of getting it out to the public.

“You almost get to the point where you can’t let go (of the work). It calls you back,” he says.

Gordon probably didn’t plan to deliver the most powerful testimony for his own device, but he has.

More than two years ago, doctors told Gordon he needed a heart transplant to live, and he wouldn’t be an immediate candidate for one. Heart disease was not new to him — it ran in his family, and he has had two heart attacks and several bypass operations.

Gordon went to settle his estate. But something in him didn’t want to let go. For two weeks, he studied about the impact of electromagnetic pulse on the heart — and decided to use the device in a way he didn’t consider before. Six months later, Gordon was trekking on his bicycle across the country, fulfilling a longtime dream. After 42 days and 2,500 miles, he pulled into his hometown in Ohio.

“It was the greatest thing in my life,” he says. Gordon cites a study done by NASA that concluded that nanosecond-level Pulsed ElectroMagnetic Field (PEMF) energy provided superior treatment for injury and trauma. The technology that was tested by NASA, which was similar to EMpulse, was as many as four times more effective in restoring tissue after trauma than other electromagnetic and electric technologies, he said.

For Gordon and his team, that was only an affirmation, after years of having their argument about nanosecond technology practically fall on death ears. Gordon discovered the effects of the technology in the late 1970s and ‘80s. A coach once asked him what did German and Soviet athletes have to heal so fast that Americans didn’t. A few years later, Gordon was sure he had the answer, and research began.

Moving the device forward had its struggles, from hurdles with the FDA to physicians not wanting anything to do with it. But the help the company received and the support in the local community far outweighed the frustrations, Gordon says.

He gives a few examples. The Olympic Property Group in Port Gamble has welcomed EM-PROBE with open arms, supplying things like free use of a conference facility — a beautifully furnished room next door to where Gordon used to see mill workers when he was the Port Gamble mill’s doctor. Congressman Norm Dicks introduced him to Department of Defense officials after seeing the technology, and an officer took several devices to Iraq. The technology has worked well for treating acute trauma and orthopedic injuries for Stryker brigade troops.

Although Gordon cannot reveal many details about prospects, he indicates that upcoming studies could give the company a huge boost. The EM-PROBE business plan, which doesn’t account for these studies, is already projecting $70 million in sales. That certainly sounds like great news for a startup biotech. But for Gordon, a former National Institutes of Health fellow who did humanitarian work in Honduras and working on development of the Trident base while in the Navy, being able to look back at his life’s work takes a new dimension.

“In many respects, this technology shaped my life,” he says. “It’s part finding yourself, and part finding the technology.”

As EM-PROBE ventures forward, Gordon says he sees the potential for Kitsap to attract many other biotechnology companies. For that to happen, Kitsap needs an incubator, like Clark County did years ago to capture companies going to Portland.

“I believe strongly Kitsap County could do the same with an incubator to capture companies looking at King and Pierce counties,” he says. “It would be a bonanza.”.