No more eye drops? AU researchers create contact lenses that release medicine over time

AUBURN, Alabama -- An Auburn University team of chemical and biomedical engineers are doing work that could someday mean people no longer have to use eye drops.

The team, led by Mark Byrne, the Daniel F. and Josephine Breeden associate professor in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, has developed contact lenses that release eye medication for as long as the contacts are worn.
The lenses deliver a constant flow of medicine without altering a patient's natural vision, or can be used to correct vision while also delivering eye medication, such as anti-inflammatories, antibiotics and anti-allergy drugs.
Byrne's contacts can be worn for up to 24 hours with daily wear lenses or up to 30 days with extended-wear lenses. Eye drops can wash away within 30 minutes.
Byrne said in a release that the contacts are not soaked in a medication that releases for a short time. Instead a drug is administered through controlled release by creating drug memory in the lens structure.
The team's paper, "Sustained in Vivo Release from Imprinted Therapeutic Contact Lenses," outlines how the group developed the lenses. The lenses were tested using a rabbit.