Glaucoma is a chronic condition currently affecting 2.7 million Americans, with prevalence expected to increase 28 percent by the year 2020. Current US health expenditure for glaucoma is over $2.5 billion. Due to limited bioavailability and poor retention time, many glaucoma drugs require multiple doses per day. This results in only 30 percent patient adherence level. SoliDrop is a drug delivery system for ocular therapeutics that reduces dosing to only once a month. Fewer doses typically means greater compliance, which in turn means lower medical costs due to glaucoma-related vision loss for insurance companies and patients.
Description
SoliDrop consists of a thermoresponsive hydrogel loaded with polymer microparticles that contain drugs or other therapeutic agents. The patient applies SoliDrop like a typical liquid eye drop. Then the gel solidifies in the fornix of the eye, where the microparticles can execute a sustained release of their contents. Before each new dose, patients could remove the old gel themselves with tweezers or saline. SoliDrop is initially intended to deliver glaucoma medication as a replacement for the current options of daily eye drops or quarterly eye injections. With SoliDrop, patients would have the noninvasive ease of an eye drop without having to remember frequent doses.
Applications
- Glaucoma
- Chronic dry eye
- Keratitis
- Post-operative inflammation
- Conjunctivitis
- Bacterial or fungal infections
Advantages
- Significantly longer lasting than traditional eye drops
- Noninvasive
- Comfortable, molds to the shape of each patient’s eye
- Patients easily self-administer and remove
Invention Readiness
Preclinical efficacy studies completed
IP Status
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220211632A1
