Science Corporation implants PRIMA retinal chip in first Stargardt disease patient

Science Corporation has placed its PRIMA retinal implant in a patient with Stargardt disease for the first time, a milestone CEO Max Hodak revealed on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, as reported by TechCrunch. The surgery took place in May at Sydney Eye Hospital in Australia as part of an ongoing trial, and the patient has already shown early signs of functional vision: he perceived a letter during his first rehabilitation session and read a word during his second.

A first target beyond macular degeneration

Stargardt disease is an inherited condition that progressively kills the light-sensing cells of the outer retina while often leaving the inner retina — the layer that forwards visual signals toward the brain — relatively intact. The result is a blind region in the center of the visual field that widens over time. TechCrunch cites figures putting the number of people worldwide who have lost vision to the disease at roughly 150,000, and there is currently no cure.

PRIMA is already commercially available in Europe for people who have lost sight to geographic atrophy, an advanced stage of age-related macular degeneration. Treating Stargardt patients would considerably widen the population the device can serve and is a step toward the company's stated goal of applying the technology across multiple retinal diseases.

How the implant works

The procedure takes about an hour and positions a chip measuring two millimeters on each side at the back of the eye, in the region where photoreceptors have degenerated. The patient then wears glasses fitted with a camera that streams the view in front of them to the implant, which takes over the job of the dead light-sensing cells and stimulates the surviving retinal circuitry.

The current results are deliberately modest. Hodak described the visual field as comparable to peering through a narrow tube: small, monochrome, but crisp and high contrast — enough to make out a couple of letters at a time. The engineering path forward, he said, involves enlarging the implant, which means coping with the curvature of the eye, and shrinking the electrodes to approach natural levels of detail. A next-generation device is in development and, according to Hodak, should reach human trials within a year, with visual acuity close to natural vision targeted within roughly five years.

A stepping stone toward broader brain implants

Hodak co-founded Neuralink and served as its president before leaving to start Science Corporation in 2021. He frames PRIMA as part of a wider brain-computer interface agenda, arguing that because the retina belongs to the central nervous system, devices like retinal prostheses, cochlear implants and motor prostheses all sit in the same technological family rather than being narrow computer-control tools.

Restoring sight is also the commercial foundation for that ambition. The company wants to validate its methods and build a sustainable business before pushing deeper into the brain. Unlike Neuralink's threads, which are inserted directly into brain tissue, Science Corporation's planned sensor would sit inside the skull resting on the surface of the brain. The company has suggested it could be used to monitor neurological activity in patients with brain tumors, and Hodak said the first clinical indication for the BCI — not yet announced publicly — will be a neurodegenerative disease most people have heard of. Stroke is another area of interest, with the idea of bridging damaged regions by connecting separate deep-brain areas. The stated long-term mission is to understand how the brain produces the mind and eventually build engineered brains, and Hodak predicted that many people will rely on some kind of implant later in life to extend not just lifespan but healthy years.

Why it matters

This is the first time PRIMA has been tested against an inherited, currently incurable retinal disease rather than age-related macular degeneration, and the patient reading a word within two rehabilitation sessions is an early signal that the approach transfers across conditions. For the brain-computer interface field, it also illustrates a pragmatic route to market: prove an implant against a concrete, underserved medical need first, then use the revenue and clinical evidence to fund more ambitious neural technology. With Hodak positioning Science Corporation directly against his former company, the effort to commercialize brain and retinal interfaces is now clearly a multi-player race.