  Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the $\gamma^{*} \longrightarrow
Q\bar{Q}-Reggeon$ vertex are calculated, where $Q\bar{Q}$ denotes a heavy quark
pair $c\bar c$ or $b\bar b$. The heavy quark mass effects on the photon impact
factor are found to be significant, and hence may influence the results of high
energy photon-photon scattering and heavy quark pair leptoproduction. In our
NLO calculation, similar to the massless case, the ultraviolate(UV) divergences
are fully renormalized in the standard procedure, while the infrared (IR)
divergences are regulated by the parameter $\epsilon_{IR}$ in dimensional
regularization. For the process $\gamma^* + q \to Q\bar{Q} + q$, we calculate
all NLO coefficients in terms of $\epsilon_{IR}$, and find they are enhanced
due to the heavy quark mass, as compared with the light quark case, and the
enhancement factors increase rapidly as the quark mass increases. This might
essentially indicate the quark mass effect, in spite of the absence of real
corrections that are needed in a complete NLO calculation. Moreover, unlike the
$\gamma^{*}$ to massless-quark-Reggeon vertex, the results in the present work
may apply to the real photon case.
