Abstract:
Glaucoma drug therapy for lowering intraocular pressure suffers from some deficiencies, such as low bioavailability, discontinuous drug action, poor patient compliance and long-term tissue toxicity. To meet clinical needs more effectively, materials engineering technologies are gradually used for the development of novel intraocular pressure lowering drug delivery systems (DDSs), and some have been commercialized in clinical treatments. However, there is still a significant gap between commercial products and clinical needs in terms of safety and treatment efficacy. Based on our previous work and understanding of glaucoma treatment and novel ocular DDSs, we herein systematically summarize the recent research results of novel DDSs in lowering intraocular pressure. Initially, the physiological structure of the eye and the difficulties of drug therapy are introduced, and then polymer materials used to develop drug delivery systems for intraocular antihypertensive therapy are summarized. New DDSs based on polymer materials, such as solid implants, gel-based DDSs and nanocarrier-based DDSs are reviewed. Furthermore, we briefly introduce the DDSs developed by our group for improving intraocular pressure. After simply analyzing the limitations of commercial ocular drug delivery systems in clinical applications, we prospect the future development of intraocular pressure lowering DDSs in the directions of more effective, more targeted and more intelligent DDSs.