Dissolving ‘contact lens’ delivers drugs to eye

Because medications delivered with a traditional eye dropper are often blinked away or travel into the nasal passages, these scientists developed a clear, round polymer film that contains tiny pockets to hold medication. The thin polymer, like a contact lens but smaller, is water soluble—as the film dissolves, it releases incremental doses of medication.

Initial tests on mice show this delivery method to be twice as effective as eye drops, and researchers hope to begin human clinical trials later this year. The ideal human application for humans, noted the researchers, would be a disk about one-tenth the size of a traditional contact lens.