twenty-five years in the lab, not in the eye

Problem statement

Patients with chronic eye diseases like age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and glaucoma require repeated drug injections into the eye — as often as monthly, for years. An implantable microchip that could store and release precise drug doses on demand would eliminate this burden, but despite being published by MIT researchers in Nature in 1999, generating a 98-patent portfolio, a $35 million upfront partnership payment from Teva, and a first-in-human trial published in 2012, the technology has never reached commercial use. The fundamental challenge is building a device small enough to implant in ocular tissue that can hermetically seal drugs for years, release them with microdose precision, and survive the corrosive biological environment without degradation.

Why this matters

AMD is a leading cause of vision loss in older adults, with a projected 196 million people affected globally in 2020, rising toward 288 million by 2040 (Wong et al., Lancet Global Health 2014). Current treatment for the wet form requires anti-VEGF injections directly into the eye as often as monthly. Many patients fall off the injection schedule due to the burden and discomfort, and under-treatment leads to preventable vision loss. An implantable delivery system could improve compliance, reduce clinical visits, and potentially deliver drugs more effectively through sustained local dosing rather than periodic bolus injections.

What’s been tried and why it hasn’t worked

MicroCHIPS, Inc. (later Microchips Biotech), founded after the 1999 Nature paper to license the MIT technology, developed microchip reservoir arrays sealed with thin metal membranes that could be opened wirelessly to release drug. Hermetic sealing was a central manufacturing challenge: the trial drug, a chemically unstable polypeptide, had to be sealed hermetically to survive in the body, which MIT's team described as one of the key engineering achievements of the program. The 2012 first-in-human trial — a wirelessly controlled microchip delivering parathyroid hormone fragment to eight postmenopausal osteoporosis patients (Farra et al.) — demonstrated proof-of-concept in a subcutaneous implant, but the ocular application described in the patent never advanced to human trials. Teva Pharmaceuticals paid $35 million upfront (an equity investment and technology access fee) in June 2015, but the partnership did not produce a marketed product. Microchips Biotech was acquired by Daré Bioscience in November 2019 for 2,999,990 shares of Daré common stock — a transaction valued at $2.4 million per Daré's 10-K, a small fraction of the $35 million Teva alone had put in four years earlier. As of mid-2025, Daré's lead product from the platform (DARE-LARC1, for contraception, not ocular use) remains preclinical, supported by up to $49 million in Gates Foundation grant funding. The portfolio of 98 granted patents could not compensate for the manufacturing, regulatory, and biological challenges.

What would unlock progress

Progress requires advances in biocompatible hermetic packaging at microscale (keeping drugs stable inside the body for years), ultra-low-power wireless communication and actuation, and biodegradable or bioresorbable reservoir materials that eliminate the need for device removal. Refillable reservoir implants (e.g., Genentech's Susvimo port delivery system, FDA-approved October 2021) represent a simpler, non-electronic alternative that has gained regulatory traction, suggesting the ocular drug delivery problem might be better solved with mechanical and materials approaches than with MEMS electronics.

Entry points for student teams

A student team could prototype a simplified single-reservoir ocular drug delivery device using biodegradable polymer encapsulation, testing drug release kinetics in a simulated vitreous humor environment. Alternatively, a team could design a benchtop model comparing controlled-release profiles from MEMS-like pulsatile delivery versus polymer-based sustained release. Skills in biomedical engineering, microfabrication, polymer chemistry, and pharmacokinetics would be most relevant.