TLDR
A Sydney man with Stargardt disease read a word during his second rehabilitation session after receiving a PRIMA retinal chip implant in May 2026. Science Corporation, founded by Neuralink co-founder Max Hodak, announced the result in October. About 150,000 people worldwide have lost central vision to Stargardt disease, and no approved restorative treatment exists.
What the patient achieved
A Sydney man enrolled in the PRIMAlia trial at Sydney Eye Hospital received a PRIMA retinal implant in May 2026 and, within two rehabilitation sessions, progressed from seeing a single letter to reading a full word. [1] The trial, registered as NCT07266584, is supervised by Dr Matthew Simunovic at Sydney Eye Hospital. [1]
The patient has Stargardt disease, an inherited condition that destroys photoreceptors in the macula and causes progressive central vision loss. Approximately 150,000 people worldwide have lost vision to Stargardt disease, and no approved treatment currently exists to restore sight. [1]
How the PRIMA chip works
The PRIMA implant is a 2mm by 2mm crystalline silicon array, 30 micrometres thick, comprising 378 photovoltaic pixels each 100 micrometres in size. [2] Placed subretinally, it occupies the space left by dead photoreceptors while the inner retinal circuits remain intact.
Paired glasses carry a front-facing camera and an eye-facing projector that shines near-infrared light onto the implant, converting it into electrical signals that stimulate surviving retinal cells. [3] Frank Holz, Chairman of Ophthalmology at Bonn University, said evolving technologies made it possible to come up with a 2x2 mm small chip that has many pixels on it that convert light into electrical stimuli. [3]
Mahi Muqit, a vitreoretinal surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, said blind patients are actually able to have meaningful central vision restoration, which has never been done before. [3]
Where the device stands commercially
PRIMA already carries CE approval and is commercially available in Europe for patients blinded by geographic atrophy due to age-related macular degeneration. [1] Science Corporation, founded in 2021 by Neuralink co-founder Max Hodak, announced the PRIMAlia rehabilitation result at TechCrunch Disrupt on 13 October 2026. [4]
Hodak said a wider-field next-generation device was expected to reach human trials within a year. The PRIMAlia trial at Sydney Eye Hospital continues.
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