Prabowo Widodo
Science Corporation, a prominent neural engineering and brain-computer interface (BCI) developer founded by Neuralink co-founder and former president Max Hodak, has reached a critical clinical milestone. Speaking on stage at the annual TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Hodak announced that the company successfully implanted its flagship vision-restoring microchip, known as PRIMA, into its first patient diagnosed with Stargardt disease. The procedure, which took place in May as part of an ongoing clinical trial at the Sydney Eye Hospital in Australia, represents a significant step forward in the commercialization and medical application of neural prosthetics for untreatable degenerative eye conditions.
Stargardt disease is a rare, inherited juvenile macular degeneration that progressively destroys central vision by causing the light-sensing cells in the outer retina to die off. While the inner retina—the layer responsible for passing visual signals onto the optic nerve and up to the brain—often remains preserved, the resulting central blind spot grows steadily over time. Globally, an estimated 150,000 individuals suffer from vision loss due to this genetic condition. By positioning a microscopic wireless chip directly beneath the damaged retina, Science Corporation aims to bypass dead photoreceptors entirely, effectively converting visual information captured by external hardware into electrical impulses the brain can interpret.
Chronology and Clinical Development of the PRIMA Technology
The path to human trials for the PRIMA device spans years of rigorous engineering, biomedical testing, and regulatory navigation. The technology originated from academic research before being advanced commercially to address geographic atrophy—an advanced, dry form of age-related macular degeneration that heavily impacts older populations. PRIMA has already achieved commercial approval in European markets for geographic atrophy patients, establishing a regulatory and safety baseline that accelerated its expansion into other degenerative retinal indications like Stargardt disease.
Following preclinical validation, the first human Stargardt trial commenced at the Sydney Eye Hospital in Australia. During initial post-operative rehabilitation sessions, the patient demonstrated rapid progress in neurological adaptation. Medical staff reported that during the first rehabilitation session, the patient was able to identify an individual letter, and by the second session, successfully read a full word.
The surgical procedure itself is relatively streamlined compared to invasive neurosurgical interventions, taking approximately one hour to place the microchip into the subretinal space at the back of the eye. Patients are subsequently fitted with specialized, camera-equipped glasses. These glasses capture the visual environment and project it via infrared light onto the microchip implant, which acts as an array of artificial photoreceptors.
Technical Scope and Mechanical Limitations
Despite the promising early results, Science Corporation executives are transparent regarding the current technical boundaries of the PRIMA system. The device currently consists of a two-millimeter by two-millimeter subretinal implant.
"The device that this patient has is a two millimeter by two millimeter implant placed in the back of the eye, and so it’s like looking through a straw," Hodak explained during his TechCrunch Disrupt presentation. "It is not a big field of view color vision. It’s a patch in their central vision where it’s black and white, but it is sharp. It’s high-contrast sharp, and so they can see a couple letters at a time."
Addressing these limitations is the primary focus of Science Corporation’s current engineering pipeline. Future iterations of the hardware require overcoming complex physical hurdles, such as adapting flat silicon manufacturing processes to match the natural spherical curvature of the human eye while simultaneously shrinking individual electrode sizes. By scaling down the electrodes, the company hopes to approach native retinal levels of visual acuity. Hodak indicated that a next-generation device is slated for human trials within the next year, with the objective of achieving near-native visual acuity within a five-year window.
Expanding the Definition of Brain-Computer Interfaces
Science Corporation was established in 2021 following Hodak’s departure from Neuralink. While Neuralink gained widespread public attention for its high-bandwidth thread electrodes inserted directly into brain tissue, Science Corporation has pursued a distinct clinical philosophy. The firm categorizes a wide array of neurotechnology—including cochlear implants, retinal prostheses, and motor prostheses—under the unified umbrella of BCIs.
"The retina is part of the central nervous system," Hodak noted. "We consider cochlear implants, retinal prostheses, motor prostheses, these are all different types of BCIs."
This holistic perspective underpins the company’s broader corporate strategy. By prioritizing vision restoration first, Science Corporation can establish clinical efficacy, secure regulatory approvals, and build a sustainable commercial enterprise before expanding into more complex central nervous system applications.
Unlike Neuralink’s penetrating intracortical approach, Science Corporation’s intracranial BCI technology is designed to sit safely on top of the brain’s surface beneath the skull. This epicortical placement aims to minimize tissue damage while retaining high-fidelity signal acquisition.
Pipeline Indications: Beyond Vision Restoration
Science Corporation’s long-term product roadmap extends far beyond ophthalmology. The company is actively preparing to launch human clinical trials for its first neurodegenerative disease indication, though specific details remain undisclosed pending formal public announcements.
In addition to neurodegenerative disorders, the company is researching applications for stroke recovery. Hodak suggested that by establishing neural connections into deep brain structures across multiple damaged areas, medical technology could theoretically reconstruct lost cortical pathways or introduce entirely new functional areas—a feat unattainable with conventional rigid electrode arrays.
Longer-term objectives reach into fundamental neuroscience. The organization’s ultimate theoretical mission is to decode how the physical machinery of the brain generates subjective conscious experience, with the distant horizon of learning to engineer functional neural tissue.
Societal Implications and Health Span Longevity
The commercialization of advanced neural prosthetics arrives amid shifting demographics in industrialized nations, where aging populations face increasing burdens of neurodegenerative and sensory-loss conditions. Science Corporation’s executive team posits that BCIs will eventually transition from rare, specialized interventions to mainstream medical tools utilized widely across older populations.
While company leadership explicitly clarifies that they are not designing consumer BCIs for healthy young adults, they project that a significant percentage of the population may require neural interface support later in life, particularly between the ages of 60 and 70.
"We want to figure out how do we extend not just lifespan but health span," Hodak stated, emphasizing that the primary value of modern neurotechnology lies in preserving functional independence and cognitive and sensory capabilities as human bodies age.
As clinical trials for the PRIMA chip continue to expand across international sites, the medical community will closely monitor patient outcome data to gauge the long-term durability, biocompatibility, and neurological plasticity enabled by subretinal prosthetics. If Science Corporation successfully meets its five-year benchmarks for enhanced visual acuity and broadens its pipeline into neurodegenerative disease treatment, the milestone achieved in Sydney may well be remembered as a foundational turning point in the integration of semiconductor technology with the human central nervous system.
