Neuralink, the brain implant company founded by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has reportedly approached Barrow Neurological Institute, a prominent neurosurgery center in the United States, as a potential partner for its clinical trials.
The company has been developing brain implants since 2016 that it hopes will eventually cure conditions like paralysis and blindness. However, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rejected Neuralink’s application to progress to human trials earlier this year, citing major safety concerns.
Since then, Neuralink has been working to address the agency’s concerns, and it is unclear when it will be successful. The company has been talking to Barrow Neurological Institute to help carry out the human trials, according to six anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
It is worth noting that these talks may not result in a partnership, and Neuralink has also discussed partnering with other centers.
Despite the potential partnership, Neuralink is facing two known federal probes into its practices. The US Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General began looking into potential animal-welfare violations at Neuralink last year.
Current and former employees have detailed concerns to Reuters about the company’s rushed animal experiments, resulting in needless suffering and deaths. Meanwhile, the US Department of Transportation is investigating the potential mishandling of hazardous pathogens during the company’s partnership on animal trials with the University of California, Davis between 2018 and 2020.
Barrow Neurological Institute is well-positioned to conduct such implant research because of its long track record in the field, according to Francisco Ponce, director of Barrow’s Center for Neuromodulation and Neurosurgery Residency Program.
The center has helped standardize brain implant surgeries in which the patient can remain asleep, a key step in making it more acceptable to a broad set of the population, Ponce said. Barrow works with deep brain stimulation devices that received FDA approval in 1997 to help reduce Parkinson’s tremors and have been implanted in more than 175,000 patients.
However, the devices Barrow has been implanting so far are different than Neuralink’s, which is a brain computer interface (BCI) device that uses electrodes that penetrate the brain or sit on its surface to provide direct communication to computers. So far, no company has received U.S. approval to bring a BCI implant to the market.
Musk has previously stated that Neuralink’s brain implants will become as ubiquitous as Lasik eye surgery.
As the company continues to navigate regulatory hurdles and address concerns about its practices, partnering with established centers like Barrow Neurological Institute could be a significant step in bringing this vision to fruition.
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…I’m all for chips and links which stall brain degeneration and help people with brain-based-disorders. But the technology must be tailored for those purposes. If the federal government is opposing the trials of such tech, then I don’t trust the government…at all. That tells me that the devices may actually work, but for some reason the government wants the control of such technology. I don’t trust too many people, but I do try to keep trust as a valuable commodity. If Musk’s implant can stop my epilepsy, I would try it. But I won’t be a test animal to government flunkies like Fauci turned out to be.