Photodynamic Ocular Drug Delivery System with Optical Coherence Tomography Oriented Microscale Robots

Retinal diseases are the most common reason for irreversible blindness worldwide. Common retinal diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, retinal vein occlusion, and non-infectious uveitis, mostly require intravitreal steroid injections in clinical management. Unfortunately, the intravitreal steroid injections, lead to other important ocular problems, such as elevation of intraocular pressure, intravitreal infections, and progression of cataracts. Because of these reasons, targeted drug delivery systems are a necessity for the medical treatment of retinal diseases. PHOTodynamic Ocular Drug delivery system with Optical Coherence Tomography Oriented microscale Robots (PHOTODOCTOR) project combines three novel technologies to solve this important clinical problem. The first technological advancement for the project is dexamethasone-saturated hyaluronic acid (HA) hydrogels with organo-ruthenium complexes, which enables controllable degradation under visible light exposure. With the help of visible light-controlled degradation, dexamethasone will be released with the light pulses. Then the hydrogels will be supplemented with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) and 3D printed as helical micro-swimmers. Insertion of the SPIONs will help the magnetic actuation of the hydrogel-based microrobots in the intraocular space. Lastly, SPION-supplemented HA hydrogels will be observed with high-resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT) system in the intraocular space to guide them in diseased areas of the retina. While HA-based structure increases penetration in the vitreous and helps the attachment on the retina, SPIONs will increase the visibility of the microrobots in OCT imaging. In this way, a magnetic-driven, visible light-triggered intraocular drug release system with OCT guidance will be produced and it could be used for not only intravitreal steroid delivery but also the treatment of retinal tumors and other retinal problems.

PHOTODOCTOR project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No [101059593].

You could find all related documentation about the project in these websites:

• EDMOND: https://doi.org/10.17617/3.J0N7UW

• GitHub: https://github.com/erdosty/PHOTODOCTOR

• Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/deposit/7769863