Science Corporation has implanted its PRIMA vision-restoring chip in its first patient with Stargardt disease, an inherited condition that gradually destroys central vision. CEO Max Hodak announced the milestone at TechCrunch Disrupt. The implant was placed in May at Sydney Eye Hospital in Australia as part of an ongoing trial; in the patient's first rehabilitation session he saw a letter, and in the second he read a word.
PRIMA is a two-millimeter-square chip implanted behind the eye and paired with camera-equipped glasses. It is already commercially available in Europe for geographic atrophy, an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration. Stargardt disease is currently incurable and has caused vision loss in roughly 150,000 people worldwide. Hodak said the current device gives a small, sharp black-and-white patch of central vision, and that the next generation—with a larger field of view and smaller electrodes—is expected to reach human testing within a year.
For Science Corporation, the Stargardt trial is a step toward proving its technology and building a sustainable business before pursuing broader brain-computer interface work. Hodak, who co-founded Neuralink and left in 2021, described retinal prostheses as a type of BCI because the retina is part of the central nervous system. The company is also developing a sensor that rests on top of the brain rather than penetrating it, and has said its first unannounced clinical indication is a neurodegenerative disease. The report is based on a single source, so there are no conflicting accounts to reconcile.