Health

New contact lenses invented to deliver eye medications

by Yuliya Talmazan | September 15, 2008 at 12:03 pm

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The days of trying to cram drug droplets into your eyes without blinking and tearing up may be gone forever. New contact lenses that act as drug dispensers are supposed to ensure every microgram of medication ends up in your eyes instead of on your lashes or face.

Mark Byrne, a chemical engineer at Auburn University in Alabama, has a developed a contact-lens material that can hold much greater concentrations of drugs and release them more slowly.

The trick is to design the molecular structure of the lens material to mimic tissue-receptor sites that the drug will target within the body. The goal is to make the dummy receptors strike a balance, not holding the drug too tight, but also only releasing it slowly into the eye.