Novel drug delivery system targets unmet needs in glaucoma treatment

Addressing delegates at the World Glaucoma Congress, Dr Varma, professor of ophthalmology at Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California said that one of the clear unmet needs in current glaucoma treatment is finding a therapy that addresses issues of patient non-compliance and fluctuations in intraocular pressure. 'One approach to this is to have a long-term drug delivery device, something which can be placed in the eye which over a long period of time can actually introduce the drug into the eye at various times in an active manner. This will address the issues of non-compliance and it will address issues relating to ocular surface problems which eye drops can cause and potentially other systemic effects which these drugs may have,' he said. The new device, which Dr Varma and his team have been developing over the past five years, is about the size of an Ahmed implant and should be commercially available in three to five years, he said. 'Our goal has been to develop an implantable post-delivery device which looks very like a standard drain implant and which can deliver programmable rates of drug delivery. It is envisaged to be able to wirelessly change the rate at which the drug gets delivered into the eye and it can be refilled over time in a routine outpatient procedure. The physician can recharge the power needed to give this drug into the eye and it will also be possible to use small or large molecule drugs with this kind of device, or a mixture of the two as required,' he said.