Keratoconus patients, those suffering with a cone shaped corneas, often have difficulty with wearing contacts. Trying to find the right kind of lense that will fit is often difficult and frustrating for some patients.

But a small West Coast-based med-tech company is offering a contact lense that is promising to give these patients some relief.

SynergEyes (Carlsbad, California) reported that it has introduced a new advanced lens design for keratoconus patients in the form of ClearKone.

It's what the company calls "a revolutionary contact lens" that takes advantage of the best features of the hybrid platform, providing superior visual acuity, centration, stability, and all-day comfort. SynergEyes lenses are the only FDA-cleared hybrid contact lenses specifically designed for keratoconus vision correction, the company said.

The lenses are available in 130 locations in the U.S. and there are plans to add 250 more starting in September, Kellie Kaseburg, VP of Global Marketing for SynergEyes told Medical Device Daily.

"SynergEyes recognized the need to develop a hybrid contact lens design that could fit a much broader spectrum of keratoconus patients, including oval cones, highly advanced central cones, decentered cones and depending on the specifics of the case, globus keratoconus and pellucid marginal degeneration," Kaseburg said. "The ClearKone lens does just that and will allow many more keratoconus patients to experience the benefits of hybrid technology."

The ClearKone lens uses hybrid technology to give keratoconus patients visual clarity of a high-oxygen rigid gas permeable contact lens and the all-day comfort and convenience of a soft lens. What makes the ClearKone lens different from other SynergEyes lenses is the design of the lens itself and the technique used to fit it, the company said.

The patent-pending design is optimized to vault the predominant irregularities of the keratoconic cornea, thus effectively restoring vision to a vast majority of irregular cornea patients, without compromising comfort or eye health, even in difficult cases.

"In the past there just weren't a lot of great options for keratoconus patients," Kaseburg said. "Some solutions had patients wearing two contacts in one eye and you can imagine how problematic that would be. To design a lense like this ... that's always been a goal of the company."

SynergEyes received a huge boost to its coffers earlier this year that partly went into funding research and development of the ClearKone lenses. Back in February the company closed in on $13.3 million series C financing (Medical Device Daily, February, 9, 2009).

De Novo Ventures (Palo Alto, California) led this round as well as SynergEyes' series B round. Bio-Star Private Equity Fund (Petoskey, Michigan) joined Series A and B investors Alloy Ventures (Palo Alto, California), Delphi Ventures (Menlo Park, California), InnoCal Venture Capital (Costa Mesa, California) and Windward Ventures (San Diego) as a new investor.

The company also launched a hybrid contact lens designed for those who need further vision correction after undergoing refractive vision surgery (MDD, March 3, 2008). SynergEyes PS (post-surgical) is also designed for people who have experienced some type of corneal trauma or suffer from certain degenerative vision conditions.

The contact lenses combine two materials – a rigid gas permeable center with a soft lens outer skirt. The hybrid design bonds a hard and soft contact lens together, resulting in a vision correction option the company said provides "crisp, clear vision for surgically altered corneas in a comfortable, healthy contact lens."

SynergEyes was founded in 2001 and is mostly funded through venture capital firms. It offers three other lenses with FDA approval that include SynergEyes A, a lens for naturally occurring ametropia, targeting patients with astigmatism, current gas permeable lens wearers and patients demanding optimized vision; the SynergEyes KC for keratoconus and the SynergEyes Multifocal lens for presbyopia.