Journal of Personalized Medicine · 4 authors, 4 centres
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This narrative review evaluates contact lens-based drug delivery platforms as alternatives to conventional eye drops for ocular diseases. It concludes that while soaking, vitamin E barriers, molecular imprinting, and supercritical fluid methods show promise for extending drug release, burst release and limited loading remain key challenges requiring further research before clinical use.
This narrative review examines contact lens platforms for ocular drug delivery, covering manufacturing methods (lathe-cutting, spin-casting, cast-molding, 3D printing), drug loading strategies (soaking, molecular imprinting, supercritical fluid method), and the use of vitamin E as a diffusion barrier. The authors describe that conventional eye drops achieve only 1–5% bioavailability in target tissue due to rapid tear film turnover, motivating the development of drug-eluting contact lenses. Key loading techniques are compared: soaking is cost-effective but produces burst release within minutes to hours for low-molecular-weight drugs; vitamin E barriers can extend hydrophilic drug release up to 2 days with improved intraocular pressure reduction versus eye drops; and supercritical fluid methods enable higher drug loading but still suffer from burst release.
