Special Seminar
Date: Monday November 18, 2024 Time: 10:00am – 11:00am Location: Donnelly Centre
160 College Street, 2nd Floor, Red Seminar Room
Dr. Heather Sheardown, PhD McMaster University
“There has to be a Better Way to Treat Eye Conditions!”
A trip to the optometrist or ophthalmologist often means a prescription for some sort of eyedrop. While well accepted, eyedrops are difficult to put in, particularly for elderly patients, children and pets, and, because less than 5% of the drug instilled actually gets to the target tissue, they must be put in frequently and at concentrations that are often painfully high. Getting drugs to the back of the eye is even more difficult and typically requires a frequent, painful injection that, while effective, has a high incidence of complications and is inconvenient for the patient. A major focus of the work in the Sheardown lab has involved shifting delivery paradigms and developing delivery methods for treating ocular conditions that are more patient friendly and more efficacious. The work takes advantage of established methods of getting drugs to the ocular tissue, while exploiting ocular biology to maximize impact. Well accepted eyedrops have been modified to minimize the need for frequent dosing through incorporation of polymers which can bind with the mucosal layer on the surface of the cornea. New methods of incorporating drugs into contact lenses can be used to take advantage of these lenses to deliver drugs to the eye. Injections into the back of the eye using polymer delivery vehicles have the potential to minimize the number of injections and improve the efficacy of treatments. The potential to use the state of the disease to control release will make these systems even more powerful. Several of these delivery systems will be discussed during this presentation, highlighting the role of engineering in changing healthcare delivery.
Biography
Heather Sheardown is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University with a cross appointment to the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine and an adjunct appointment with the School of Optometry at the University of Waterloo. She holds a two term Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Ophthalmic Biomaterials and Drug Delivery and has published more than 160 peer reviewed papers on this subject. She is currently the Scientific Director of
C20/20+, an ORF funded incubator aimed at the commercialization of ophthalmic biotechnologies. Sheardown was previously the Scientific Director of C20/20 and prior to that the 20/20 NSERC Ophthalmic Materials Research Network. These initiatives brought together researchers and companies with a goal of creating and commercializing materials based treatments for ophthalmic conditions. She holds more than 20 patents or provisional patents for work in her lab, many in collaboration with company partners. She currently serves as the Chief Scientific Officer of 20/20 OptimEyes, a McMaster based spin out focused on developing and commercializing a micelle based technology developed in her laboratory.