Innovative Drug-Dispensing Contact Lens Delivers Glaucoma Medication

Contact lenses that deliver medication to treat eye diseases like Glaucoma are getting closer to reality, new study reveals.

A team from Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a pair of drug-eluting contact lenses to ensure prolonged delivery of anti-glaucoma eye drops. Glaucoma is a disease in which an elevated intraocular pressure causes damage to eye, resulting in visual field loss, sometimes progressing to blindness. The treatment of glaucoma primarily requires the use of certain eye drops, such as the latanoprost, that will lower the eye pressure.

The findings after testing a pair of recently developed contacts have showed that a new pair of “smart” contact lenses could be the solution to such problem.

“In general, eye drops are an inefficient method of drug delivery that has notoriously poor patient adherence,” said Dr. Joseph Ciolino, a cornea specialist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. “This contact lens design can potentially be used as a treatment for glaucoma and as a platform for other [eye] drug delivery applications.”

The contact lens the research team developed “is capable of delivering large amounts of drug at substantially constant rates over weeks to months,” said Daniel Kohane, director of the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery at Boston Children’s Hospital.

These contact lenses contain encapsulated latanoprost-polymer films, where it will not only delivers drugs, but will also be able to correct nearsightedness or farsightedness.

Sources: eurekalert.org, medgadget.com