Clik here to view.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on a new way to dispense latanoprost, a drug commonly used to treat glaucoma, without eye drops. Their secret: contact lenses.
“In general, eye drops are an inefficient method of drug delivery that has notoriously poor patient adherence,” said Dr. Joseph Ciolino, Mass. Eye and Ear cornea specialist and lead author of the paper. “This contact lens design can potentially be used as a treatment for glaucoma and as a platform for other ocular drug delivery applications.”
The new contact lens design is capable of delivering large amounts of latanoprost at substantially constant rates for weeks and appeared to be safe in cell culture and animal studies, according to a release from Mass. Eye and Ear.
A complete report of these findings will appear in the January 2014 issue of Biomaterials.
