WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Neuralink competitor Synchron, Elon Musk’s brain chip startup, is preparing to recruit patients for a large-scale clinical trial needed for commercial approval of its implant, the director said general of the group to Reuters.
Synchron plans to launch an online registry on Monday to recruit the dozen or so patients needed, while about 120 clinical trial centers have offered to help, CEO Thomas Oxley said in an interview.
“Part of this registry is to enable doctors to address patients with motor disorders,” he said.
“There’s a lot of interest and we don’t want there to be a bottleneck right before the study we’re going to do,” he added.
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Synchron will analyze the American data with a view to organizing a larger-scale study while awaiting the green light from the American Medicines Authority (FDA), Thomas Oxley said.
Synchron and the FDA declined to comment on the expected timing of this decision.
The group wants to include patients paralyzed as a result of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), stroke and multiple sclerosis into its program, Thomas Oxley said.
It received approval for preliminary trials in the United States in July 2021 and has already implanted its chip in six patients.
Synchron wants to include Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, the University at Buffalo and the University of Pittsburgh, which are already collaborating on the preliminary study in the larger-scale trial.
(Report by Marisa Taylor, French version by Augustin Turpin, edited by Sophie Louet)
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