Patented contact lens material to improve ocular wound healing
Researchers have engineered an innovative contact lens material designed to administer drugs in a controlled manner, accelerating the healing process for eye abrasions. Beyond ocular applications, this novel development holds promise for addressing ailments in other bodily regions, such as large skin ulcers. This development holds significant potential in targeted drug delivery technology with broad potential for wider medical treatment.
In the study, published in the open access journal Pharmaceutics, researchers from the University of Waterloo and the Centre for Eye and Vision Research in Hong Kong, developed a collagen-based material tailored to act as a therapeutic bandage for corneal wounds. This innovative lens not only acts as a protective barrier but also facilitates controlled drug release, expediting the healing process of the eye.
Corneal injury and subsequent damage to the corneal epithelium can lead to corneal scarring, vision loss, and potential blindness. Ocular trauma and corneal ulceration contribute significantly to cases of monocular blindness. Typically, patients with corneal abrasions undergo a treatment regimen involving the wearing of clear, oxygen-permeable bandage contact lenses for seven to 10 days, often coupled with antibiotic eye drops. However, the one-time application of antibiotics presents challenges in maintaining adequate drug levels on the eye for sustained therapeutic effect, highlighting a current lack in facilitating optimal ocular surface repair.
To address this challenge, author on the paper, Dr Lyndon Jones, discusses how the research group developed a drug-delivering bandage contact lens that could simultaneously treat the eye and allow it to heal using a responsive targeted-release drug delivery system.
“The more injured you are, the more drug gets delivered, which is unique and potentially a game changer,” says Dr Jones.
Recognising the significance of collagen, a protein inherent to the eye and crucial in wound healing, the researchers embarked on harnessing its properties for their development. However, despite collagen's innate suitability, its softness and fragility rendered it unsuitable for direct use as a contact lens material. Consequently, the team engineered a solution by transforming gelatin methacrylate, a collagen derivative, into a biomaterial ten times stronger. This formulation is known as gelatin methacrylate formulation (GelMA+), a modified version of GelMA.
The researchers explain how the unique characteristics of collagen-based materials, including GelMA+, is that they degrade in the presence of matrix metalloproteinase-9, an enzyme naturally occurring in the eye. This prompted the researchers to explore the potential of GelMA+ in an enzyme-triggered drug delivery system tailored for ocular wound sites.
“These enzymes are very special because they’re involved in wound healing, and when you have a wound, they’re released in greater quantity,” says author on the paper, Dr Chau-Minh Phan.
In the study, the team used bovine lactoferrin as a model wound-healing drug, incorporating it into the material. Remarkably, complete wound healing was achieved within five days using the drug-releasing novel contact lens material in human cell culture.
The researchers elucidate that the novel development not only facilitates wound healing but also offers versatility in addressing the severity of eye abrasions. The treatment approach can be tailored accordingly, varying based on the degree of severity.
“If you have a material that can be degraded in the presence of this enzyme, and we add a drug to this material, we can engineer it so it releases the drug in a way that is proportional to the amount of enzymes present at the wound. So, the bigger the wound, the higher the amount of drug released,” Dr Phan explains.
These findings underscore the potential of GelMA+ gels as a biomaterial for enhancing corneal wound healing. The researchers’ next endeavour involves fine-tune the material, including the encapsulation of various drugs, as they aim to expand its applicability to other areas of the body, such as addressing large skin ulcers.
This study was supported by the Ontario Research Fund, the InnoHK initiative, and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.
If you're interested in learning more about this research, you can access the paper published in Pharmaceutics here: https://shorturl.at/lyIX9