Second Sight Medical hopes to raise $32 million through an initial public offering in support of its wearable visual prosthetics.
The company plans to offer shares at $9 apiece, saying it’ll used the proceeds from its IPO to boost sales & marketing, seek regulatory approvals in new regions and work on the next generation of its technology for helping restore vision to the blind.
Second Sight won FDA approval in February 2013 for its Argus II retinal prosthesis, the 1st time that U.S. regulators approved a "bionic eye" system for patients with blindness. The Argus II is designed to help restore some measure of sight to patients with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that leaves patients with either bare light perception or none at all. There is currently no cure for the rare condition, which is diagnosed about 250 times each year.
The 1st-of-its-kind Argus II system is comprised of 2 main components: an eyeglass-mounted camera and an electrical stimulator implanted in the eye. The device converts images captured by the camera into a series of electrical pulses that are transmitted wirelessly to electrodes in the retina to simulate vision.
Second Sight won Medicare coverage in August and additional funding from regulators in Germany and Italy later that month. The 1st U.S. commercial implants of the device took place in January.
The company has implanted about 90 of the Argus II systems to date in patients with blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa, but hopes to boost its applicable market by evaluating the technology in treatment of age-related macular degeneration. AMD is the leading cause of blindness in patients over the age of 65 in developed countries, according to Second Sight’s IPO prospectus.
Second Sight has also submitted for regulatory approvals in Canada, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and the company is already at work on the next generation of its visual prosthetic, which it called the Orion I. The company said that the Orion I system could expand the market for its products to nearly all forms of blindness, and the device should be developed with about 24-36 months after the offering.
Second Sight hasn’t yet scheduled the open date for its IPO, but the company will trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol EYES.
