Company: C. Light Technologies, Boston, MA
Company Description: C. Light Technologies is an AI-driven neurotech startup using their patented retinal eye tracking to map neurodegeneration and assess therapeutic efficacy. As a venture backed, seed-stage startup, C. Light Tech paves the way in early detection for brain disease using the eye as a window to the brain.
Nomination Category: Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Achievement in Science or Technology
 Nomination Title: The Retitrack
- Briefly describe the nominated organization: history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 200 words used.
C. Light, a medical device and AI startup, ventures into an unexplored healthcare frontier, detecting and analyzing motion as small as 1/100th of a human hair. The human retina--the back of the eye--is also the front of the brain. When a brain is distressed, eye movement abnormalities can result. This is the reason a doctor asks a patient to “follow my finger” or “look at my finger and look at my nose.” They are performing a bedside eye-tracking exam.
Using the power of AI and advanced optical engineering, C. Light’s machine, the Retitrack built by Vision Science/Physiological Optics Ph.D. and C. Light CEO Christy Sheehy-Bensinger, is 120 times more powerful than today’s best pupil eye-tracker, and 1000 times better than a phone or webcam.
With multiple grants from the NIH and Gates-funded ADDF (Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation), as well as studies with UPMC and UCSF, Christy and her team of clinicians, AI specialists, and engineers are working with top medical institutions and patients to analyze and quantify minute eye movements (the motions that occur when trying to keep the eye as stable as possible) as biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases and injuries such as Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, and concussions.
- Outline the organization's achievements since the beginning of last year that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 231 words used.
This year C. Light made major progress. The startup tripled its headcount (from two to six), adding late-stage co-founder and expert AI scientist, Joe Xing, Ph.D.
In 2021--a year of whirlwind development post-COVID restrictions--C. Light completed a usability study (June), finalized their UI/UX design (September), optical and industrial designs (October), and filed eight provisional patents on new hardware and software capabilities of the Retitrack device (December). In addition, in December 2021, C. Light signed on two investigational device customer sites.
In May 2022, C. Light completed the second tranche of its $4.5 million seed funding round. Also in May, C. Light signed a new clinical trial contract (with Ora Clinical) to measure early age-related macular degeneration. They launched their early adopter program (EAP) for leading key opinion leader customers in June 2022 and are excited to deploy these EAP devices at top-tier institutions this fall.
On August 16, 2022, C. Light submitted their device for FDA approval after completing all device and human subject required testing for 510(k) submission. C. Light now has six Retitrack devices that were created for FDA testing.
This past year, C. Light also published two peer-reviewed journal articles: “Fixational eye movements following concussion” (December 2021) in the Journal of Vision and “Characterizing Fixational Eye Motion Variance Over Time as Recorded by the Tracking Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope” (February 2022) in Translational Vision Science and Technology.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 249 words used.
This year C. Light made progress in defining the optimal conditions for eye analysis, published in peer-reviewed journal articles:
- Similar to how doctor’s offices might ask patients to fast after midnight before having bloodwork done to get standard results, the team conducted a baseline study of healthy individuals that uncovered that while eye motion measurements were consistent from day to day, time of day needs to be standardized for tests, given that the healthy patients recorded higher numbers in the evenings. They published their findings in a February 2022 peer-reviewed article “Characterizing Fixational Eye Motion Variance Over Time as Recorded by the Tracking Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope” in Translational Vision Science and Technology.
- In December 2021 the C. Light Team published a study of people who recently had concussions versus normal patients. In “Fixational eye movements following concussion” in the Journal of Vision they revealed that fixational eye motion was much bigger in people who had had concussions versus healthy people, especially when the subjects were asked to focus and stabilize their eyes on the center of an image.
- C. Light had previously done work identifying irregular retinal eye movements in patients with multiple sclerosis, as published in the Multiple Sclerosis Journal in February 2020 under the title “Fixational microsaccades: A quantitative and objective measure of disability in multiple sclerosis.” This year they increased their AI performance to distinguish multiple sclerosis patients from controls to greater than 90% accuracy. Press and patent links are also provided.
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated achievements since July 1 of 2020, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions, provide them in the appropriate spaces below:
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the organization's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 248 words used.
C. Light’s invention opens up a new world where a 10-second, non-invasive, non-dilated scan could help physicians not only diagnose neurological conditions early, but also objectively measure the success of treatments for our most helpless patients. For example, the first asymptomatic stage of Alzheimer’s lasts 10-15 years; if physicians and patients knew it was coming there could be many more opportunities to help, including therapeutics.
C. Light is not the first to conduct studies of eye motion as a biomarker. (See MacAskill & Anderson 2016 Current Opinion in Neurology.) However, their contribution to the field is significant, as C. Light’s own, more precise device has higher magnification, enhanced AI measurement capabilities, and reduced cost. A normal Scanner Laser Ophthalmoscope with adaptive optics costs $250,000, but C. Light’s device provides single cell resolution videos for less than one quarter of the cost.
It can take years to get a medical device prototyped, clinically validated, and fully FDA-approved. An estimated 98% of digital health startups fail, however, C. Light continues to inspire investor confidence while building strong databases of how fixational eye motion changes in varying neurological disease states, having more than 10,000 patient and control scans to date.
In addition, only 20-30% of companies who complete the application process for NIH STTR/SBIR grants receive funding, but after receiving two Phase I SBIR/STTR grants from the NIH, C. Light is now the final phase of approval for a pending $2.2 million Phase II SBIR grant in 2022.
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