Second Sight Medical Products Inc. (NASDAQ:EYES) Gains 17% on implant progress

By Marilyn Mullen

Tuesday, 24 February 2015 11:14

Shares of Second Sight Medical Products Inc. (NASDAQ:EYES) soared 17% to $9.92 on hefty volume in early session on Tuesday.

Health Canada approves Second Sight Medical Products Inc. (NASDAQ:EYES) Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System for the treatment of patients with severe-to-profound outer retinal degeneration. The system induces visual perception in blind patients via electrical pulses to the retina's remaining cells. This results in the perception of light patterns in the brain. One type of outer retinal degeneration is retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a rare hereditary disease that causes a progressive degeneration of the light-sensitive cells of the retina. The condition leads to significant visual impairment and potentially blindness. There are ~13K people in Canada with RP and 1.2M worldwide.

The French Government is paying the bill for the device and surgery under its Forfait Innovation program which allows early access to the product to 30 patients with advanced RP, an inherited disease that frequently results in complete blindness. It affects ~24K people in France and ~167K Europeans.

Second Sight is another medical company started by serial entrepreneur Al Mann, whose track record includes Advanced Bionics, MiniMed and MannKind (NASDAQ:MNKD). It has had an inauspicious debut, however. It peaked at $24.02 on November 20, the day after its IPO at $9 on the 19th. It then sold off hard, bottoming at $8.05 on January 26.

Second Sight Medical Products, Inc. is a medical device company that develops, manufactures and markets implantable visual prosthetics to restore some functional vision to blind patients. The Company’s product, The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System (Argus II) treats outer retinal degenerations, such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP).It restores functional vision for people suffering from blindness.

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