An advance for drug-eluting contact lenses: Delivery to the back of the eye

Drug-eluting contact lenses, which gradually release drugs into the eye, offer a promising alternative to daily eye drops, which can be unpleasant and hard for patients to properly administer. In a 2016 pre-clinical study of glaucoma, the engineered lenses lowered eye pressure at least as well as daily eye drops.
New work from Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Boston Children’s Hospital extends these findings to the harder-to-reach back of the eye, particularly diseases of the retina. Currently, most retinal diseases require eye injections and implants that carry potential side effects, some of them serious. Moreover, nearly 1 in 4 patients given eye injections don’t come back, due to a fear of needles in their eyes.

“Though there are drugs that are effective for these conditions, it is hard to get them to the retinal tissues in an non-invasive way,” says Joseph B. Ciolino, MD, the Henry Freeman Allen Cornea Scholar at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.
Ciolino co-led the new study, published in Biomaterials, with Daniel S. Kohane, MD, PhD, director of the Laboratory for Drug Delivery and Biomaterials at Boston Children’s. It tested contact lenses dispensing dexamethasone, a steroid used to treat inflammatory eye diseases.
Promising preclinical findings
In preclinical animal models of uveitis and macular edema — two forms of eye inflammation — the lenses safely provided sustained drug delivery to the retina for one week. In fact, to the team’s surprise, the lenses provided 200 times the concentration levels of hourly eyedrops, and were as effective as eye injections in preventing retinal damage.
“We had previously shown that our design for drug-eluting contact lenses could provide sustained release of substantial amounts of drug, over extended periods, to the anterior parts of the eye,” says Kohane. “The question then became whether this approach could be used to treat diseases of the back of the eye — the retina and adjacent structures. We now know we can.”

Within one year, the team hopes to launch clinical trials to study the effectiveness of the lens in human patients, Ciolino says.
Amy E. Ross and Lokendrakumar Bengani, both of Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Boston Children’s, were co-first authors on the study. Ciolino and Kohane are inventors on a patent related to this work filed by Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Related Posts :
-
Pioneering trial offers hope for late treatment of ‘lazy eye’
In children with amblyopia or “lazy eye,” one eye is weaker than the other for any of a number of ...
-
Help your child prevent myopia with two simple steps
Myopia — also known as nearsightedness, or the inability to see things far away — is becoming more prevalent in ...
-
Get a jump on potential eye conditions by having your child regularly tested
It can be surprising to learn your child has an eye condition. Children don’t always outwardly show symptoms of ...
-
Facial weakness: A dark matter detective story
Elizabeth Engle, MD, has devoted her career to finding genetic and developmental causes for disorders of eye, eyelid, and facial ...