Bacteria-enhanced contact lenses lubricate themselves

After a long day, contact lenses don't usually feel comfy. And any relief offered by eye drops can fade quickly. Now researchers have developed "living" soft contact lenses that lubricate themselves—with molecules produced by microbes ( Adv. Mater. 2024, DOI: 10.1002/adma.202313848 ). Someday a similar strategy might be used to deliver drugs to the eyes . Contact manufacturers often impregnate lenses with wetting agents. "But of course, at some point, after a few hours, the contact lens is empty," says Aránzazu del Campo , a biomaterials chemist at INM—Leibniz Institute for New Materials. Contacts' capacity for lubricants is limited by the need to maintain their optical properties. And the eye's secretion of tear fluids constantly clears away anything that is delivered . The residence time of lubricants or drugs provided by eye drops is brief—only a few minutes, she says. But del Campo and her colleagues realized that microbes could