Week in review: Dissolving lens, blind guardian, squalamine tribulations

A weekly roundup of ophthalmic news from around the web.

Five undergrads from Lithuania traveled to California last week to unveil a promising invention: dissolving contact lenses that continuously release glaucoma medication. Their NanoLens technology aims to boost drug absorption, negating the need for highly concentrated eyedrops. The aspiring engineers took home second prize at the Silicon Valley Innovation Challenge. LABIOTECH

Ohr Pharmaceutical’s CEO was “very disappointed” with results of the phase 3 MAKO trial, which tested a combo therapy for people with wet AMD. Topical squalamine combined with monthly ranibizumab injections failed to improve visual acuity beyond ranibizumab monotherapy, Ohr reported. Nasdaq

Elsewhere, two phase 3 trials of Kala Pharmaceutical’s KPI-121, a twice-daily nanoparticle corticosteroid eyedrop, produced mixed results. Healio

Blind architects in Dallas have created a mobile app called WayAround that could make things more accessible to the visually impaired. The app communicates with palm-sized audio tags—available as magnets, buttons, clips or stickers—that can be affixed to any item, such as a can of food, and programmed to announce pertinent details when scanned. Dallas Innovates

A new study suggests that many children will indeed shoot their eyes out if presented with a toy gun. Eye injuries related to pellet and paintball guns increased by 169% between 1990 and 2012, according to an analysis of 442,800 children published in Pediatrics. MedPage Today