Science Corporation, the startup from former Neuralink president and co-founder Max Hodak, has hired a leading neurobiologist to lead the first human clinical trial in the United States for its biohybrid brain-computer interface.
Dr. Murat Günel, chair of neurosurgery at Yale University School of Medicine, was signed on as a scientific advisor after two years of discussions. His goal is to surgically place the first sensors for future interfaces, ones that eventually combine lab-made neurons with electronics, into patients’ brains.
Founded in 2021, Science closed a $230 million Series C funding round last month, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. The company’s most advanced product is PRIMA, a device to restore vision to people who have lost their vision due to macular degeneration and similar conditions. Science acquired the technology in 2024 and has been developing the technology through clinical trials. Subject to regulatory approval, the plan is to make it more widely available in Europe, possibly later this year.
But Hodak co-founded the company with a bigger vision in mind: building a reliable communication link between computers and the human brain to treat diseases and pave the way for human enhancement, including adding entirely new sensations to the body. He has dedicated his career to this proposition, from talking his way into a graduate school neuroscience lab as an undergraduate to founding the first biotech computing startup to building Neuralink with Elon Musk.
Neuralink and other organizations have successfully used electronic sensors to detect brain activity in patients suffering from ALS, spinal cord injuries, and other diseases that disrupt communication between the brain and the body. A user wearing an implanted device can control a computer or generate words on the screen just by thinking. However, the path to actual market for these devices remains uncertain given regulatory challenges and the relatively small number of patients with relevant diagnoses.
Hodak concluded that traditional methods of delivering electricity to the brain using metal probes and electrodes are misguided. While the technology can yield impressive results, Günel says these probes can damage the brain and impair the device’s performance over time. This limitation led the Science founding team to a more organic approach.
“The idea of harnessing natural connections through neurons and creating a biological interface between electronic devices and the human brain is genius,” Günel told TechCrunch.
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Alan Mardinley, the company’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, has led the development of Science’s biohybrid sensor with a team of 30 researchers. The final device will be implanted with lab-grown neurons. These neurons can be stimulated with light pulses and are designed to naturally integrate with neurons in a patient’s brain, forming a bridge between biology and electronics. In 2024, the company published a research paper showing that the device could be safely implanted in mice and used to stimulate brain activity.
The company’s current focus is on developing device prototypes and exploring ways to grow neuronal cells for a variety of therapeutic applications that meet criteria for medical use.
Günel will advise the team as it prepares for human clinical trials, and is already in discussions with the medical ethics committee that oversees human trials. The first step will be testing the company’s advanced sensors, which do not use implanted neurons, in living human brains.
Unlike the Neuralink device, which is inserted directly into brain tissue, Science’s sensor is implanted inside the skull but sits on top of the brain. Perhaps because of that distinction, the company said it would not seek FDA approval for these trials, insisting that the tiny device, which packs 520 recording electrodes into an area the size of a pea, poses no significant risk to patients.
The team’s plan is to find candidates who already need major brain surgery, such as stroke patients who need part of their skull removed to reduce the effects of brain swelling. In such cases, Professor Günel hopes to place sensors above the cortex and assess their safety and effectiveness in measuring brain activity.
Günel believes that if successful, the device could help treat multiple neurological conditions. One early use was to provide gentle electrical stimulation to injured brain or spinal cord cells to encourage healing. More complex applications could include monitoring neural activity in brain tumor patients and giving caregivers early warning of upcoming attacks.
But if these devices reach their full potential, Günel believes they could offer more effective treatments for conditions like Parkinson’s disease, a progressive disease that gradually takes away control of a patient’s body. Current treatments include experimental brain cell transplants and electrical deep brain stimulation, but neither has been proven to reliably halt disease progression.
“We envision this biohybrid system as combining two things: an electronic device and a biological system,” he told TechCrunch. “For example, in the case of Parkinson’s disease, you can’t stop the progression of the disease. In neurosurgery, you just put electrodes to stop the tremors. On the other hand, if you can really put the[transplanted]cells back into the brain and protect those circuits, there’s a chance that you can stop the progression of the disease, and I believe that’s a good chance.”
However, there is much work to be done before then. Günel said it was “optimistic” to expect trials to start in 2027.
