Startup Science Corp will begin selling a retina chip in Europe that restores some sight to people with a form of age-related blindness, a milestone for the company that aspires to eventually bring brain implants to the market.
This is the first device from a US brain implant company to be made widely available to patients. Science’s Prima implant is a chip that sits on the back of the eye and, with the aid of a special pair of glasses, enables people to regain some vision.
“This is the first in hopefully a long series of commercial products that proceed to advance that horizon, sometimes incrementally, but relentlessly,” Chief Executive Officer Max Hodak said in an interview.
The Prima implant received the CE mark, which allows sales in Europe without the need for additional country-level approvals.
Science Corp, based in Alameda, California, is the second most valuable US brain implant company, behind Elon Musk’s Neuralink. The area is attracting billions of dollars of investment and support from the world’s richest people. The Chinese government has also declared it a national priority, and China this year approved its first brain-computer interface for commercial use.
In addition to the retina implant, Science is developing devices that plug into brain tissue using engineered neurons, as well as other neurotechnologies. It has raised $489 million and is valued at $1.5 billion, Bloomberg News reported in March.
The Prima implant can treat geographic atrophy due to age-related macular degeneration, which is an advanced from of the disease. Hundreds of thousands of people in Europe could be eligible for treatment, Hodak said.
The broader disease, a deterioration of part of the retina that can impair people’s ability to see straight ahead, is the most common cause of vision loss in older adults. Treatments can slow the disease, but there are no cures.
Science is in the process of setting up payment arrangements in different countries and expects to implant its first commercial patient in August, probably in Germany, Hodak said. The company aims to implant it into dozens of patients this year, and about 200 next year, he said. The price isn’t set and will vary by location and insurer, according to the company.
