Elon's Plan B: Musk Reportedly Explores Synchron Investment
23 Aug 2022
Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Elon Musk has reportedly gotten in touch with Synchron, a company developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) device, to explore potential investment opportunities, according to a report by Reuters.
The report cited four sources familiar with the matter, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. New York-based Synchron is currently outpacing Musk's own Neuralink in the race to develop an effective BCI device.
When Musk launched Neuralink in 2019, he set a high bar for his company and aimed to launch human studies by the end of 2020. The start-up has been working on its implant since 2016. He has since adjusted his timeline. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Musk pushed his target date to this year but it has yet to meet this goal.
Neuralink is working on a BCI device that would allow recipients to control computers using only their brains. The company is looking to cut a coin-sized hole in the skull in which to fit its implant. The placement procedure will be performed by Neuralink’s surgical robot, stitching the device’s tiny wires into the brain. This would provide a clearer view of the recipient’s neural activity.
Ultimately, Neuralink’s BCI device aims to restore independence and a semblance of normalcy to people suffering from severe spinal cord injuries and varying degrees of paralysis.
Synchron, founded in 2016, shares this goal. Unlike Neuralink, however, Synchron’s device doesn’t require opening up the skull. Instead, the implant is coursed through the blood vessels, which the company says are “the uncharted highways into the brain.”
Both Synchron and Neuralink have been in a tight race to develop the first approved BCI implant. But in May, Synchron beat Neuralink to the clinic. The company announced that it had enrolled the first patient in its COMMAND trial after being granted the first-ever investigational device exemption (IDE) awarded by the FDA.
Previously, Synchron had placed its BCI implant in four patients in Australia under the SWITCH trial. Long-term data from this study pointed to a good safety pro the company’s device, which triggered no fatal or debilitating adverse events, the company stated. Patients in the SWITCH study were eventually able to use the implant unsupervised.
Spurred by recent advancements in neurology and electronics engineering, the BCI space has earned much industry interest. In California, Neurolutions' BCI device IpsiHand was given de novo market authorization by the FDA in early 2021 to help facilitate limb rehabilitation in patients with chronic stroke. IpsiHand is the first BCI device to receive regulatory approval.
Another up-and-coming player in the BCI space is Kernel which, like Neurolutions - and unlike Neuralink and Synchron - is developing a wearable (rather than implantable) BCI device that can accurately quantify the wearer’s brain activity. The goal here is to deepen the understanding of how the brain reacts to various stimuli.
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