Although hydrogel contact lens has attracted increasingly concerns as delivery carriers in
the field of oculopathy therapy, traditional hydrogel does not show excellent drug
encapsulated and controlled properties due to simple hydrophilic polymer chain lacking
extra interaction with drug molecule. Herein, functional hydrogels were synthesized in this
research to delivery ophthalmic drug for oculopathy therapy. Functional monomer of
mono-GMA-β-CD and functional crosslinker of MA-β-CD were incorporated into hydrogel
by copolymerization. For hydrogels, equilibrium swelling ratio and contact angle was
influenced by mono-GMA-β-CD ratio and MA-β-CD ratio, respectively. All hydrogels
exhibited similar water loss behavior and good transparency. Hydrogels had rheological
characteristic of typical elastomer. Viscoelasticity and surface morphology of hydrogel
were also affected by mono-GMA-β-CD ratio and MA-β-CD ratio. In the aspect of properties,
functional hydrogel containing β-CD domain exhibited better protein resistance capacity
and significantly higher equilibrium encapsulated drug amount than traditional hydrogel.
Besides the performance, drug release behavior of drug encapsulated hydrogel was
adjusted by both mono-GMA-β-CD ratio and MA-β-CD ratio. Preliminary in vivo evaluation
revealed that functional hydrogel contact lens had better effect and efficacy on lowering
intraocular tension than commercial eye drop. It is inferred from all results that functional
contact lens has a bright prospect in the application of oculopathy therapy