Contact lens dispenses glaucoma drug

The contacts were designed by researchers at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with materials that are FDA-approved for use on the eye.

‘In general, eye drops are an inefficient method of drug delivery that has notoriously poor patient adherence. This contact lens design can potentially be used as a treatment for glaucoma and as a platform for other ocular drug delivery applications,’ said Joseph Ciolino, M.D, Mass. Eye and Ear cornea specialist and lead author of the paper.

The latanoprost-eluting contact lenses were created by encapsulating latanoprost-polymer films in commonly used contact lens hydrogel. Their findings are described online and will be in the January 2014 printed issue of Biomaterials.

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