Facile way to synthesise hydrogel contact lenses with good performance for ophthalmic drug delivery

Hydrogel contact lenses are ideal carriers for ophthalmic drug delivery. Conventional poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate) hydrogel contact lenses have restricted applications in ophthalmic drug delivery due to low oxygen transmissibility. Water and hydrophilic monomer N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone are introduced in polymerisation to enhance the properties of hydrogel such as gelation time, transparency, structure, swelling and water retention properties in this work. Norfloxacin as a drug model could be loaded into hydrogels by soaking repeatedly. The sustained drug release in a given period is dependent on the characteristics of solution and loading time.