Living Therapeutic Materials for Zero-waste Therapeutics

In many therapeutic treatments, only a small fraction of the administered drug is uptaken, and a large part is wasted and released to the environment. One example of inefficient drug delivery are eye drops, the delivery vehicle for 85% of ocular treatments, where less than 5% of the administered drug is uptaken by the eye and the remaining 95% is wasted. Drug waste means economic loss and an environmental risk. We present drug eluting materials with the unique property to self-produce biopharmaceuticals directly at the therapeutic site. The materials are designed to host biofactories of natural therapeutics, and to maintain and control their productivity in-vivo long term. The biofactories produce and deliver the drug using energy sources from body fluids. These self-replenishable drug eluting devices can deliver the drug continuously at the required concentration and improve therapeutic outcome at zero-waste. We demonstrate the potential of this concept in a contact lens prototype that contains biofactories of hyaluronic acid and can self-lubricate.<br/><br/>References:<br/>M Puertas-Bartolomé, I Gutierrez-Urrutia, LL Teruel-Enrico, C Nguyen-Duong, K Desai, S Trujillo. C Wittmann, A del Campo, Advanced Materials 2024, 36 (27), 2313848. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202313848