UC Irvine

Fungal keratitis is estimated to have at least 1 million incidences and causes 100,000 eye removal globally annually. Hourly eye drop administration remains the standard of care, and however, its low bioavailability and low patient compliance often lead to poor patient outcomes. My work is a response to the call for the urgent unmet need for an alternative drug delivery platform to combat ocular infection. In my dissertation, I utilized two composite systems for the antifungal contact lens: mesoporous silica nanoparticle (MSN) embedded chitosan and poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) embedded poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (pHEMA). For the MSN-chitosan system, I explored the loading methods and conditions to incorporate antifungal drugs into MSNs, characterized drug release profile and materials properties, verified fungal killing efficacy against Fusarium and Aspergillus to evaluate its potential as an antifungal contact lens material. For the PLGA-pHEMA system, I converted a planar structure prototype into a convex lens. I described the adjustment of lens fabrication process for precise geometry control, lens design iteration for improvement of drug release, and verification of the antifungal performance of the convex lens. This work provides insights of drug loading and delivery of highly insoluble drug and examples on contact lens fabrication process design with precise control on the laboratory scale.