Neural Noise

PRIMA retinal implant for macular degeneration

2 min read

  • PRIMA is a retinal implant (sensory neuroprosthetic) for restoring sight lost to macular degeneration.1
  • Stanford Medicine reports an established clinical translation path for BCI-adjacent visual restoration.1 1

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

  • PRIMA is a wireless subretinal photovoltaic implant paired with camera glasses that project near-infrared light onto the chip; it was developed from work by Daniel Palanker at Stanford and is commercialized by Science Corporation (formerly Pixium Vision).2 3
  • The PRIMAvera trial (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04676854) was an open-label, prospective, single-group, baseline-controlled study conducted at 17 clinical sites across five European countries.4 5
  • A total of 38 participants with geographic atrophy due to age-related macular degeneration received the implant; 32 were assessed at the 12-month primary endpoint (of the 6 not assessed, 3 died, 1 withdrew, and 2 were unavailable).4 5
  • The primary endpoint was met: 26 of 32 completers (81%; 95% CI 64–93; P<0.001) showed clinically meaningful visual-acuity improvement, defined as at least 0.2 logMAR gain from baseline at month 12.4 5
  • Participants gained a mean of about 25.5 letters (more than 5 lines) on the ETDRS chart, with one participant improving by 12 lines, and roughly 84% reported reading letters, numbers, and words.2 3
  • Safety: 26 serious adverse events occurred in 19 participants, with about 81% arising within two months of surgery and roughly 95% of those resolving within two months; mean natural peripheral vision was unchanged.4 5
  • Results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2025 (DOI 10.1056/NEJMoa2501396), with the trial funded by Science Corporation and the Moorfields NIHR Biomedical Research Centre.4 2
  • BCI/neuroprosthetics implication: the wireless design allows explant-free upgrades to higher-resolution next-generation implants or tiled multi-array coverage, and framing as a “BCI retinal implant” positions photovoltaic sensory neuroprosthetics for form-vision restoration in incurable central vision loss.3 4

Footnotes

  1. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMitgFBVV95cUxOc00wREdyS2Zoa3VUVHN1b0RsWExpNXV5VjR6ejRmaDBXSUFKRFlnS2FuUzZMa182S3U4WDJiMnlWdGVPcnRhMWJTTEQzZjhicFZZVktMOTVPYVg3OFVEdDZPeHlZZklvUTZCQWJWTXpyX2ZsczFGYTl1OVNCWWZ6SXhVb1dqV25KYlp0VGRqZ1MycFc1aXhiaExXYTdtZHM3WHd0QWRJWU80N19IQXZpeTdkZ3B6Zw?oc=5 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/10/eye-prosthesis.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251020014793/en/Science-Corp.s-PRIMA-BCI-Implant-Restores-Functional-Central-Vision-to-Patients-with-Geographic-Atrophy-Caused-By-Age-Related-Macular-Degeneration-a-Leading-Cause-of-Blindness-The-New-England-Journal-of-Medicine-Reports ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2501396 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7618305/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

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