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>> Okay, up next from the University of Waterloo is Chau-Minh Phan who's doing a Ph.D.
in Vision Science supervised by Dr. Lyndon Jones and Dr. Lakshman Subbaraman.
His presentation title is "Treatment
of Fungal Eye Infections Using Contact Lenses and Nanoparticles."
[ Applause ]
>> Chau-Minh Phan: Your eyes are the windows to your soul.
Considering how important that is, it makes sense that your body constantly tries
to keep them clean with your tears and your eyelids every time you blink.
Despite these efforts your eyes can still get dirty.
That's when you get an eye infection.
When this happens your body needs a little bit of extra help; that's where I come in.
I specialize in dealing with fungal eye infections.
Just imagine those nasty green molds that typically grow on your cheese
or on your bread now growing inside your eyes.
Left untreated this can lead to vision loss and even blindness.
Unfortunately the current treatment in the form of an eye drop is not optimal,
as most of the drugs quickly get washed or drained away
by the same cleaning mechanisms that keep your eyes clean.
To offset this, eye drops have to be given every hour until the infection is gone,
which can last for at least two weeks.
My research aims to improve this treatment process
by designing a drug delivery device capable of releasing antifungal drugs to the front part
of the eye over a long period of time.
Contact lenses are perfect for this task for two reasons.
First, the [inaudible] structure, which can be described as a spongy network,
has the ability to uptake and release drugs.
Secondly, the unique placement on the eye ensures a high quantity
of drugs gets released directly to the cornea.
The real challenge comes down on how to enable these contact lenses
to continuously provide drugs over several days to even a couple of weeks.
This way all you would have to do is wear one
or two contact lenses containing drugs to treat a fungal eye infection.
To achieve this I've modified the ratios of the individual components that make
up a contact lens to design a material capable of providing continuous drug release.
To further improve this I've used nanoparticles to first package my drugs
into capsules before loading them onto a contact lens.
This process is very similar to trying to send an item through the mail.
You can't send an item without first packaging it
in a suitable container, in this case, nanoparticles.
This way you're item's easy to deliver, won't get damaged on the way,
and will likely get to its destination.
So far I've been able to create a drug delivery system using both contact lenses
and nanoparticles capable of releasing an antifungal drug called Nanomycin
for up to 12 hours.
Future work will aim to increase this release time and use the system with other drugs
for the treatment of fungal eye infection.
This message was brought to you by the University of Waterloo.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]