ITI Life Sciences, the publicly-funded innovation group, yesterday offered up to £10 million to fund research into how drugs can be delivered into the eye.
The Scottish Government funding will also be used to study new ways of diagnosing diseases using the eye.
ITI said it had chosen to concentrate funding on eye research because it expects the prevalence of eye diseases to increase as the population
ages.
Eleanor Mitchell, managing director of ITI Life Sciences, said she wanted to find ways of delivering drugs into the eye that did not involve injections.
She added: "There is significant interest in the application of new biologics-based therapeutics to eye diseases and increasing evidence that certain diseases, including diabetes, can be detected at an early stage in the eye.
"Unfortunately, the eye has natural barriers which make effective delivery of new therapeutics and diagnostics into the eye extremely challenging."
ITI plans to hold a workshop with academics and commercial experts to discuss ways in which new technology can be developed and sold.
Kate Rowley, manager of Nexxus, the west of Scotland bioscience network, said: "Alternative means of drug delivery that are less painful, less invasive and generally more comfortable for the patient are to be welcomed and I look forward with interest to the fruits of this new programme.
"The eye of course presents its own particular problems but I'm sure that the innovation for which Scotland's researchers are known, will overcome these to good effect."
ITI invited responses from companies working both in and outside Scotland. The deadline for responses is 2 June.
The full article contains 271 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
