Eye treatment of the future: drugs and other approaches

In terms of sheer quantity of prescription and non-prescription preparations, the eye is massively served by medications designed to address a host of ocular problems. A quick look into any Walmart store in the US reveals row upon row of off-the-shelf drops, ointments and the like – why on earth would we need any more?

If we go one step further, and start looking at prevention as well as cure, then we have many more products to choose from that the pharmaceutical industry sometimes terms ‘nutritionals’ but we would call supplements for the well-being of the eye.

All of this belies the fact that the eye is challenging with respect to efficient pharmacological intervention. Almost all medications for any ocular condition have an efficacy and/or side-effect profile that could be improved upon. For some eye problems we have a vast selection of preparations that are for the most part effective but not ideal. In addition, for some of our common ocular problems such as cataract and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) there is no accepted medical intervention as yet. In childhood myopia, pharmaceutical agents have been shown to slow myopic progression but side-effects have limited their implementation.1