Science Corporation implants its vision-restoring chip in its first Stargardt disease patient
Max Hodak, the former president and co-founder of Neuralink, detailed on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt how his company's work with PRIMA is part of its path toward a novel brain-computer interface (BCI).
Key points
- Science Corporation implanted its PRIMA vision chip in its first Stargardt disease patient.
- The patient received the implant in May at Sydney Eye Hospital in Australia.
- CEO Max Hodak said the device works like artificial photoreceptors in the eye.
Science Corporation has implanted its vision-restoring chip, PRIMA, into its first patient with Stargardt disease, CEO Max Hodak announced at TechCrunch Disrupt. Stargardt disease is an inherited eye disease that gradually destroys central vision and is currently considered incurable.
The company said the first Stargardt patient received the PRIMA implant in May as part of its ongoing trial at the Sydney Eye Hospital in Australia. During the patient's first rehabilitation session, he saw a letter, and during the second, he was able to read a word.
How the implant works
Patients undergo an hour-long procedure that places a small chip in the back of the eye, where photoreceptors have degenerated. They then wear camera-equipped glasses that transmit a view of the world to the chip, and the implant works essentially like artificial photoreceptors.
Hodak said the patient's device is a two millimeter by two millimeter implant placed in the back of the eye. He described the experience as like looking through a straw, with a black-and-white but sharp, high-contrast patch in central vision where patients can see a couple letters at a time.
The retina is part of the central nervous system. We consider cochlear implants, retinal prostheses, motor prostheses, these are all different types of BCIs.
— Max Hodak
Company plans and other uses
PRIMA is commercially available in Europe for patients who have lost sight to geographic atrophy, an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration. Science Corporation believes its approach can be applied to multiple diseases, including Stargardt disease, which affects the outer retina and causes a central blind spot that gradually enlarges. Approximately 150,000 people worldwide have lost vision due to the disease.
Hodak founded Science Corporation in 2021 after leaving Neuralink. He said the company has a next-generation device being worked on that will be in humans in the next year, and that over the next five years it expects to get close to native acuity. The company has also said its brain-computer interface sensor will be implanted inside the skull and rest on top of the brain, unlike a Neuralink device, which is inserted directly into brain tissue.
