Functional hydrogel contact lens for drug delivery in the application of oculopathy therapy

Although hydrogel contact lens has attracted increasingly concerns as delivery carriers in the field of oculopathy therapy, traditional hydrogel does not show excellent drug encapsulated and controlled properties due to simple hydrophilic polymer chain lacking extra interaction with drug molecule. Herein, functional hydrogels were synthesized in this research to delivery ophthalmic drug for oculopathy therapy. Functional monomer of mono-GMA-β-CD and functional crosslinker of MA-β-CD were incorporated into hydrogel by copolymerization. For hydrogels, equilibrium swelling ratio and contact angle was influenced by mono-GMA-β-CD ratio and MA-β-CD ratio, respectively. All hydrogels exhibited similar water loss behavior and good transparency. Hydrogels had rheological characteristic of typical elastomer. Viscoelasticity and surface morphology of hydrogel were also affected by mono-GMA-β-CD ratio and MA-β-CD ratio. In the aspect of properties, functional hydrogel containing β-CD domain exhibited better protein resistance capacity and significantly higher equilibrium encapsulated drug amount than traditional hydrogel. Besides the performance, drug release behavior of drug encapsulated hydrogel was adjusted by both mono-GMA-β-CD ratio and MA-β-CD ratio. Preliminary in vivo evaluation revealed that functional hydrogel contact lens had better effect and efficacy on lowering intraocular tension than commercial eye drop. It is inferred from all results that functional contact lens has a bright prospect in the application of oculopathy therapy.