Max Hodak, the 36-year-old CEO of Science Corp., a California-based startup, has made a groundbreaking announcement in the field of vision restoration. In an interview with El PAÍS at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Hodak shared his company's recent success in helping patients with severe eyesight problems regain their ability to read letters and numbers. Some patients have even managed to read entire pages of a book after receiving the PRIMA ocular prosthesis.
This remarkable achievement was recently reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. Hodak, a biomedical engineer by training, previously co-founded Neuralink, Elon Musk's company, where he served as president. In 2021, he founded Science Corp., focusing on restoring vision through brain-computer interfaces.
Hodak's interest in brain-computer interfaces dates back to his childhood. He believes that the brain is the seat of one's entire experience and that brain-computer interfaces can achieve effects not possible in traditional medicine. With PRIMA, patients can go from being almost blind to recognizing faces and reading every letter on an eye chart, even doing crossword puzzles.
The PRIMA system consists of a small chip with hexagonal cells acting as solar panels. It's placed under the retina and works with glasses that have a camera and a laser projector. The camera records the surroundings, and an infrared emitter projects the images onto the implant. This stimulates the retina, allowing PRIMA to act as an electronic photoreceptor.
PRIMA is designed for patients who have grown up with sight, with intact optic nerves but dead light-sensitive cells (cones and rods). It can treat various eye diseases, including age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt disease, and diabetic retinopathy. The chip bypasses the dead cells, stimulating the retina directly.
Hodak clarifies that PRIMA is not a cure for blindness but a significant step towards restoring normal vision. He estimates that within five to seven years, they might achieve normal visual acuity, and within a decade, patients could have a range of options almost as good as their original vision.
The CEO also addresses the broader field of brain-computer interfaces, which includes ocular prostheses, cochlear implants, and closed-loop neuromodulation for diseases like Parkinson's. He believes that many of these advances will be non-invasive, with wearables, and that the field is rapidly evolving, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in brain-computer interface technology.
