The 83-year-old who sold his invention for $466 million, and still walks to work every morning
Michael Belkin’s journey from rooftop experiments to global glaucoma breakthroughs proves some minds never retire.
Michael Belkin is a serial entrepreneur of a particularly rare breed. Like other serial entrepreneurs, he never stopped developing, researching, and inventing throughout his life, but he did so not out of a pursuit of money, but primarily out of the joy of creation, curiosity, and a desire to bring medicine to the world. It so happened that he made his first exit when he was already 68 years old. At an age when most of his peers were retiring, Belkin sold a company he founded for $180 million. Even then, he had no intention of retiring, but continued to research and invent. Last year, when he was 82, the second exit came: one of his greatest inventions, an automated device for treating glaucoma, was sold for $466 million to the eye care giant Alcon.
And there’s still no talk of rest. Every morning, as he has for 30 years, Belkin shows up at the same office at the Eye Research Institute at Sheba Medical Center, turns on the fluorescent light above him, and begins his workday in a space that looks like a small museum. The room is packed with compact binders, framed certificates, photos, posters of organs of vision, and medical models collected over decades. It perfectly suits his image as a professor of ophthalmology at Tel Aviv University who has authored more than 500 scientific articles and holds over 40 patents.
At 83, Belkin, a pioneer in the field of ophthalmology in Israel and a respected professional worldwide, is at his peak, and not just because of the exit. He is involved in many local ophthalmic companies as an investor or consultant, and in recent months he has received two awards: the "Visionary Award" from the American Glaucoma Research Foundation and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the MIXiii conference, held under the auspices of the Israeli Association of Advanced Industries.
When asked what continues to push him forward at his age and after such academic and business successes, he answers simply: "The game. I enjoy the game. It's more important than anything."
More than money?
"I'm currently inventing something in Singapore, and there's a discussion about how much of the company I'll get. I told them I don't care. They gave me a certain amount, not bad at all, and then another discussion started about what to give to all the others who work and do great work, which neither I nor the other inventor could do. So I said, 'Take it from me and that's it.' What do I care?"
Don't you care?
"Look, in the last sale I already received a million dollars from Alcon, and when I'm 94 I'll receive another 17 million from it (the main part of the consideration is conditional on meeting future sales targets). I have no doubt that we'll reach the sales targets, unless they invent something that will solve the problem of glaucoma with one drop, which won't happen. On the other hand, I won’t be 94 either. No chance. So my descendants will benefit. So I don't care, I give. If I have a million or three million, it doesn't change my lifestyle one bit."
Not even a little?
"Not at all. The money has affected the lives of my children and grandchildren, because after the first exit I bought apartments for my three children, and now, after the second exit, my six grandchildren will also have apartments. But even now, when I have a lot of money, I still work full-time."
So what is "the game" for you?
"Developing things."
It's not a game.
"It is a game. Well, a hobby. Okay?"
Why a hobby?
"Because for me it's better than any other entertainment. The financial side is important. I don't underestimate it. But I also help people develop things without having any shares in them."
And how do you feel when you invent something that could be a solution to some disease?
"I get a lot of pleasure from it. It's like winning at chess."
So you're not considering retiring.
"And doing nothing? I'll go crazy. I can't imagine it. It's a nightmare."
Eliminating the Silent Killer of Vision
A year ago: In July 2024, Swiss pharmaceutical company Alcon completed the acquisition of Belkin Vision, which developed the Eagle, an automated device for treating glaucoma using a laser and without any physical contact. Glaucoma is a disease that causes gradual, slow, and continuous damage to the optic nerve. Because it does so without early symptoms such as pain or difficulty seeing, until the disease is already in its advanced stages, it is also called the “silent killer of vision” and is considered the second most common cause of blindness. Today, about 80 million people suffer from glaucoma, about half of whom are not even aware they have it. More than 4.2 million of them live in the United States. In other words, there is a large market for treating the disease.
The innovation in the device that Belkin invented with Dr. Mordechai Goldenfeld lies in the simplicity of the treatment. While in standard laser treatment for glaucoma (SLT, Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty) doctors must attach a special lens with a mirror inside it to the patient’s eye and then rotate it for about five to ten minutes, treatment with Belkin's Eagle (which was renamed Voyager after the acquisition) lasts a little more than a second and does not require physical contact with the eye. The laser beams it emits are directed to the treatment area through the white part of the eye, and the application is intuitive.
"I based the idea on a method that has existed for 20 years and made it automatic," Belkin explains. "It's quite simple, the area we treat is around the perimeter of the cornea, under the sclera. That is, it cannot be seen with direct vision. In the old method, a lens with a mirror is placed on the eye, and you also look at the target area and shoot the laser through the mirror. To do this 360 degrees, you have to rotate the lens because the mirror is small. It's a process that takes a long time and requires a glaucoma specialist to perform it, not a regular ophthalmologist. In the Eagle device, the software identifies and shoots only at the target area."
In 2019, six years after Belkin Vision was founded (as part of Sheba's innovation arm and in collaboration with Tel Aviv University's Ramot company), a clinical trial it conducted showed that laser treatment was superior to eye drops for lowering intraocular pressure and treating open-angle glaucoma. Patients using this method required fewer surgeries, developed fewer cataracts, and maintained stable intraocular pressure.
In December 2023, the company received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market the device as a first-line treatment option. This helped Belkin and his co-founder and then-CEO, Daria Lemann-Blumenthal, sell Belkin Vision to Alcon for $81 million upon closing. An additional $385 million will be transferred to them and other investors in the coming years if the device meets expectations and hits predetermined revenue targets.
Lemann-Blumenthal says the grants the company received from the European Union played a crucial role in its success. “The road was full of bumps. We started with a grant from the Innovation Authority, and in 2016 we received 2.5 million euros from the European Union’s Horizon program, without which the company would not have existed, because we had not met any of the milestones from private investors,” she says. “Then we won 17.5 million euros from the EU’s EIC program.”
Even before it was sold to Alcon, Belkin Vision had sold more than ten Eagle devices, one in Israel (at Shaare Zedek Hospital) and about a dozen more in Europe. According to Belkin, "The device in Germany treats dozens of patients a day, and when there is such a device for everyone, it will solve the problem of glaucoma. The goal of ophthalmology is for people to die without being blind. If we manage to reduce the risk of blindness by even 50%, we will help millions of people."
Since then, sales efforts have been focused on the American market, where several dozen devices have been sold so far. The business model is not based on selling the device itself, which costs about $30,000, since it is a one-time purchase, but on a procedure fee: the clinic purchases a package of 20, 40, or 100 treatments from the company. The price of the treatment is about $300 per person (similar to SLT treatments), about $250 of which is covered by medical insurance.
A pool experiment that almost collapsed a house
The buds of creativity sprouted in Belkin as a child, and his first "invention" nearly ended in catastrophe.
"I was doing experiments at a young age, six or seven," he recalls with a smile. "We had a two-story house and a one-meter-high railing on the roof. Since there were no swimming pools in our area, my neighbor and I, who also later earned a PhD, thought we'd make our own pool. So we went up to the roof, blocked the gutters, and turned on the faucet."
So, you flooded the roof.
"We tried, but luckily the friend’s father came up and stopped us. If he hadn’t, I did the math later, the building would have collapsed because the roof would have filled with several tons of water."
Belkin's father, Yerachmiel, was born in Belarus, immigrated to Israel in 1927, and spent his early years in Mandatory Palestine building roads, draining swamps, and farming. He later became a member of the General Staff of the Haganah organization, the first officer of the Knesset, and deputy director of the State Comptroller's Office. He and his wife, Gita, a homemaker, set up their home in Tel Aviv and had three children: Uzi, the eldest, who was one of the founders of Kibbutz Nahal Oz; Michael; and Shimshon, a professor of microbiology at the Hebrew University. Shimshon’s son, Dr. Avner Belkin, followed in uncle Michael's footsteps and also became an ophthalmologist.
Belkin attended the Hadash high school in Tel Aviv, where he met his wife Ruth, a sociologist. They have been married for 56 years. The couple lives in Kiryat Ono, and Belkin says he walks from their home to his office at the hospital every day, "about 30 minutes. There's an excellent study that shows if you take ten thousand steps a day, your risk of dementia drops by 50%, so I'm very diligent about it. Today, for example, I’ve already taken 4,700 steps. On the way back, my wife picks me up by car, and I complete the rest of the steps on a treadmill."
In the early 1960s, he completed bachelor's and master's degrees in science at Cambridge University, a period he describes as "the most beautiful years of my life", and then transferred to study medicine at the Hebrew University. During one of the rotations between departments as part of his internship at Assaf Harofeh Hospital, he came to the ophthalmology department, and fell in love.
After receiving certification, he served as a permanent military doctor at Prison 6 and later as head of the research and development branch of the Medical Corps. In this role, he developed protective goggles against bullets and shrapnel, and experimented with a host of other inventions, some of which ended in spectacular failure. These experiences became the basis for his lecture, "My Failures."
Not many people take such pride in failure.
"For me, it's completely routine. This lecture is intended for people who want to learn how to advance in science and translational medicine, which is what I do. You can’t do startups without failing, and you shouldn’t give up. And I always say: if you're in academia, you can even write articles about your failures, and then you get a professorship."
He was discharged from the IDF with the rank of lieutenant colonel and appointed director of the pediatric ophthalmology unit at Tel Hashomer. But, as someone who says he can’t stand routine, he felt the role wasn’t varied enough.
When asked what attracted him to the field of ophthalmology, he lights up. "Do you know what a cataract is?" he begins with a question. "It’s a process in which the lens of the eye begins to become cloudy. Today, they operate almost at the onset of the cataract, but back then, surgery happened only at a very late stage, when people could no longer see in either eye because of the cloudiness. So patients would come in blind and leave seeing. What could be better than that? It was an extraordinary experience. I felt like I could truly help people, and the impact on their lives was profound."
Belkin was one of the first doctors at the Goldschleger Eye Research Institute, founded in 1978 as part of the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. It is still located in the eye department building at Sheba Medical Center.
"When I was still head of the R&D branch, my deputy, Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, told me: ‘I heard that Tel Hashomer is opening an eye research institute.’ I approached the late Prof. Michael Blumenthal, who was head of the department, and Prof. M. Sokolovsky, who was overseeing the project on behalf of the university, and that was it. I managed the institute between 1980 and 1990, until I got tired of the bureaucracy."
Years later, in 2013, Prof. Blumenthal’s daughter, Daria Lemann-Blumenthal, would join Belkin at the laser company, closing a generational circle.
"I grew up in the lap of ophthalmology because my father was a surgeon who, among other roles, ran the ophthalmology department at Sheba and served as president of the European Cataract Society," she recalls. "Prof. Belkin knew me as a child, and when he came to the RAD Biomed incubator, he said: ‘I know Daria,’ and I said: ‘I know Prof. Belkin.’"
The Prostate Behind Entrepreneurship
Belkin founded his first company in 1998, at the age of 56. "Like any gentleman my age, I started having prostate problems," he begins another story. "I went to see the head of the department at Sheba at the time, urologist Prof. Benad Goldwasser, who was also involved in Dr. Kobi Richter's company, Medinol, which made small stents for the heart. He asked me if I had anything similar for the eyes. I told him, ‘Glaucoma!’" Belkin bursts out laughing as he explains how Ex-PRESS, a microscopic implant that drains fluid and lowers intraocular pressure, came into being. The device has since become a less invasive surgical alternative for treating glaucoma.
Explain.
"After that appointment, I started thinking. It became clear to me that a stent could be used to lower pressure in the eye. I co-founded Optonol with Goldwasser, Richter, and Ira Yaron, as a spin-off from Medinol. With the great help of Dr. Yosef Glowinsky, we did the first trials in Italy with a friend of mine, and then more trials in Israel. Later, the company made the mistake of trying to market it on its own. We tried and tried and tried, but it didn’t work."
Eventually, at the end of 2009, Optonol was sold to Alcon for $180 million. Reports from the time indicated that one of the biggest beneficiaries of the deal was Yaron, while the ownership stakes of other founders, including Belkin, had been significantly diluted. "I don’t remember exactly how much I made from the first exit," Belkin says today. "It was enough to buy apartments for my kids. A little over a million dollars."
With Belkin Vision, you already went through RAD's incubator.
"That’s right. They offered me Daria [Lemann-Blumenthal, CEO]. That way, I just invent, and others do the work."
From that point on, what was your involvement in the company?
"I served as CMO the whole time and was involved in talks with investors. I helped raise significant funding from a private individual I know in Singapore, and we also secured investment from a Japanese eye-pharmaceutical company. The connection with Alcon also came through me, although I didn’t get involved directly in that deal."
And when you had to travel to meet them, did you fly?
"I did."
In short, you lived the life of a young entrepreneur at 70.
"That’s the huge advantage of being at a university. Nobody tells you what to do. You do what you want, especially after retirement."
Are you retired?
"I’ve been officially retired for 17 years, but I still work full-time as a researcher at the institute, and I also serve as acting chairman of the Helsinki Committee at Tel Hashomer. I get paid 500 shekels a month. But I enjoy it, it’s fine."
What percentage did you hold in Belkin Vision on the eve of the sale?
"I never paid much attention to that. I probably had a high percentage in the beginning, but I’m used to being diluted. Now that I have money, I invest in other companies to avoid being diluted again."
"Maybe I Can Transplant Eyes"
These days, Belkin devotes most of his energy to NovaSight, a company he co-founded and where he is the inventor behind the core technology. NovaSight develops solutions for treating amblyopia (lazy eye) and other vision problems in children, using advanced eye-tracking systems. "We had no problem raising money. We’ve received FDA approval and are selling in the U.S.,but with Trump back, I don’t know what will happen, since part of the device is manufactured in China. Meanwhile, we’ve also begun sales in Europe."
In parallel, Belkin invests in and advises other companies. One of them, which excites him in particular, is the biotech company NurExone, which is developing exosome-based therapies to treat central nervous system injuries.
"The central nervous system doesn’t regenerate," he explains. "Everyone knows that about the spinal cord. That’s also why we can’t transplant eyes. Cosmetic procedures already exist, but you can’t connect healthy nerves. This company, which began with an invention by Prof. Shulamit Levenberg from the Technion, developed a pharmacological method to deliver a substance to the injury site that inhibits a certain molecule and reduces damage. They tested it on rats, cut their spinal cords, and after treatment, they walked again."
And where do you come in?
"I sit on the company’s scientific board. Since research on acute spinal cord injury is well-covered, I suggested they focus on glaucoma, which affects many more people. I measure the retina’s and brain’s electrical response to light stimuli, which tells me how well the retina is functioning. We ran a trial on six rats, and their condition improved dramatically. We completed another trial on twelve more rats, because six isn't enough to draw conclusions. If the results look promising, we’ll move to a glaucoma model and begin human trials in Singapore. I plan to start a new company as their subsidiary."
And what will this new company do?
"The main problem with glaucoma is the death of the optic nerve. If this works, I might actually be able to transplant eyes."
