Science Corporation Implants Vision-Restoring Chip in First Stargardt Disease Patient
Science Corporation CEO Max Hodak announced that the company has implanted its vision-restoring chip, PRIMA, into its first patient with Stargardt disease — an inherited eye condition that progressively destroys central vision. Hodak, the former president and co-founder of Neuralink, shared the milestone on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, explaining how PRIMA fits into the company's broader pursuit of a novel brain-computer interface (BCI).
"The retina is part of the central nervous system," Hodak said. "We consider cochlear implants, retinal prostheses, motor prostheses — these are all different types of BCIs."
Hodak outlined a vision in which BCIs expand into a wide range of medical technology applications, rather than serving simply as a way to control computers.
While PRIMA is already commercially available in Europe for patients who have lost their sight to geographic atrophy — an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration — the company believes its approach can be applied to multiple diseases, including Stargardt disease, which is currently considered incurable.
How Stargardt Disease Affects the Eye
Stargardt disease affects the outer retina, causing the gradual death of the eye's light-sensing cells while potentially sparing the inner retina — the part that passes visual signals on to the brain. The condition produces a central blind spot that gradually enlarges over time. Approximately 150,000 people worldwide have lost vision due to the disease.
"One of the nice things about this device approach — when I was saying the brain's a computer, vision is electrical potential, like electrical activity down the optic nerve," Hodak said. "That's all vision is to the brain. And so if you can get the optic nerve to signal the rest of the brain correctly, then you can provide vision to it."
First Patient Results
The company says its first patient with Stargardt disease 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 was able to see a letter; during the second, he could read a word.
via TechCrunch AI