Beauty Wrapped in Comfort for Everyday Wear

Made possible through years of research and based on the number one selling daily disposable contact lens in the world.

Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Companies have created a contact lens that many U.S. practitioners didn’t know to expect. The company recently introduced a daily disposable lens that helps support ocular health and provides excellent vision and comfort while also enhancing the natural beauty of the eye without changing its color.

This feat wasn’t accomplished overnight. It required years of research — both in the lab and out among consumers — and inspiration from Asia. The result: the 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE^™ lens. In this article, members of the R&D team responsible for this new technology discuss how it was developed and what makes it different from color contact lenses.

Insights From Asia

The first generation of 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE^™ lenses resulted from insights from JJVCC’s partners in Korea, who alerted the company to a popular new contact lens — a “circle” lens imprinted with a prominent limbal ring to make the eyes look bigger — which was being produced locally.

“Women were falling in love with what this lens was doing for their eyes,” says Lenora Copper, Director of R&D Global Beauty Platform. “Our Korean partners identified the opportunity and the unmet need, and we designed it in a daily disposable lens to further delight patients.” These conversations led to the development of the first 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE^™ lenses, an entirely new product line, which was launched in Asia in 2004 and now includes three distinct effects for the Asian market.

Based on the success of DEFINE^™ lenses in Asia, JJVCC began to explore other opportunities in the beauty category. “Over the last 5 years, we gathered insights from western consumers to understand what they like about their eyes and what they would like to enhance,” Ms. Copper says. “We learned the majority of women would like to enhance their eyes naturally without changing their color.” With this understanding, JJVCC’s designers, engineers and research optometrists went to work to create a lens to meet those needs.

Design Elements

The new designs started with the basic circle lens concept: a dark limbal ring to enlarge and define the iris border and emphasize the white of the sclera. That was only the beginning, however, as the design team worked to replicate the subtle patterns of the natural irises in non-Asian eyes and incorporate them — actually enclose them — into a contact lens with the high quality standards of ACUVUE^®.

“As our consumers became more sophisticated, our patterns needed to become more sophisticated, as well,” says Senior Product Designer Angie Bowers. “Our philosophy has been shaped from a combination of design and art principles. We use color and contrast, definition and a clean edge, and iris-inspired patterns.”

For example, Ms. Bowers notes, defining the edge of the limbus with a dark color creates the illusion of a brighter, whiter sclera. What’s more, researchers have found that people who have dark limbal rings are considered more attractive than people with no limbal rings.¹ They also noted that limbal ring thickness decreases with age and could serve as a signal of youth. “The DEFINE^™ lens is really about that insight and creating a young, healthy, bright look,” Ms. Bowers says.

When developing patterns for the DEFINE^™ lens, the design team needed to be mindful of the countless pattern variations present in the iris, as well as a somewhat intangible emotional component — how people feel about their eyes. “The natural iris is beautiful,” Ms. Bowers says, “and everyone’s iris is unique. Women treasure that about their irises; it’s what makes them individuals. So we wanted to highlight the wonderful shapes and geometries of the iris without masking its natural beauty.”

As a result of this intensive research, JJVCC recently introduced three designs to the U.S. market: NATURAL SPARKLE^™, NATURAL SHIMMER^™ and NATURAL SHINE^™. “It’s really not about eye color,” Ms. Bowers emphasizes. “The different levels of translucency and negative space of the three designs allow the iris to show through to varying degrees, so that each design performs differently on individual eyes. A wearer’s preference and desire for impact will dictate which lens someone prefers.”

These unique, eye-enhancing patterns are entirely enclosed in the 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE^™ lens, so the pigment doesn’t come in contact with the eyelid or cornea. No other U.S. lens manufacturer has done this.

Engineered for Comfort

The 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE^™ lens is based on the 1-DAY ACUVUE^® MOIST lens with LACREON^® Technology, and despite having pigments enclosed in the etafilcon A material, the DEFINE^™ lens has the same key characteristics as the MOIST lens, including water content, center thickness, oxygen permeability and UV protection.

“Our lens manufacturing process enables us to completely enclose the pigment within the lens material, while keeping the same lens profile,” says Principal Engineer Jaclyn Hernandez. “In vitro examination using a scanning electron microscope shows the depth of the pigment, and an atomic force microscope shows that the surface of the DEFINE^™ lens is unchanged in the pigmented area compared with the nonpigmented area.² This finding is in contrast to cosmetic lenses that have the pigment printed on the surface, which can affect surface roughness and comfort.”

Also contributing to a comfortable lens-wearing experience is the use of JJVCC’s proprietary LACREON^® technology, which permanently embeds a moisture-rich wetting agent within the lens, creating a highly lubricious surface.

Clinical Performance

Principal research optometrist Meredith Jansen, OD, MS, FAAO, knows how important proven performance is to eyecare practitioners. “When JJVCC added the cosmetic benefit to the 1-DAY ACUVUE^® MOIST lens, we wanted to make sure the resulting lens fulfilled all of the core values of ACUVUE^® Brand lenses that doctors know and trust: that it was still safe for the eye, that it was still comfortable, and that it still provided crisp vision,” Dr. Jansen says. “We found the DEFINE^™ lens behaves similar to the clear MOIST lens. Almost every way we can measure it, we found it’s no different on the eye.”

Researchers found the pigments enclosed within the 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE^™ lens do not affect lens fit, corneal staining or visual acuity.³ “That’s really important for practitioners to know, because comfort and vision associated with most of the color contact lenses on the market are different,” Dr. Jansen says. “For example, if the pigment is too close to the optic zone, patients may see the print on the lens, especially in dark settings when the pupil is larger. In addition, the printing on the lens surface may degrade comfort.”

Oxygen permeability is a key contributor to healthy contact lens wear, and again the DEFINE^™ lens performs similarly to the MOIST lens, with an average Dk/t of 25.5.^§ “We wanted to make sure that having the pigment completely enclosed in the lens did not change the oxygen permeability in any way, and we found that it did not,” Dr. Jansen says. “The oxygen particles are small enough to diffuse around the pigment particles and enter the eye.”

Another important benefit that carries over from the MOIST platform is UV protection. “We’ve all learned the importance of wearing sunscreen on our skin, and we know our eyes may benefit from UV protection,⁴ as well,” Dr. Jansen says. “All ACUVUE^® products offer UV protection, and 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE^™ lenses offer Class 2 UV blocking, which blocks approximately 97% of UVB and 81% of UVA light.^*† This is particularly relevant because many people know the importance of sun protection, and it’s an added benefit to anyone who is new to contact lenses to educate them on a comprehensive UV strategy (wide brim hat, UV-blocking sunglasses and contact lenses) in addition to vision correction.”

Although DEFINE^™ and MOIST lenses are clinically equivalent, Dr. Jansen notes some patients may notice a slight subjective visual awareness when they begin to wear DEFINE^™ lenses. “As with fitting any new contact lens, or even new eyeglasses, there’s an adaptation period for the wearer,” she says. “Although most patients don’t notice anything, we feel it’s important that practitioners educate patients that it may take a couple of days to adapt to the lens.”

Aha! Is Just the Beginning

Will these contact lenses become a daily beauty essential for your patients? Anecdotally, maybe. Some members of the JJVCC team put the DEFINE^™ lens in that category, based on their own experiences. According to Dr. Jansen — again, anecdotally — patients are likely to experience three “moments” when they try 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE^™ lenses. The first is that Aha! moment in the practitioner’s office when the patient sees how awake and beautiful her eyes look. The second is when friends start telling her how great she looks, without really knowing why (New eye makeup? A different hairstyle?). The third “moment” is the sadness she feels when she removes her lenses and loses that effect.

“Having worked in the contact lens industry for 18 years, I’ve helped develop many great products,” Ms. Copper says. “The DEFINE^™ lens is by far my favorite, because it’s so unique. It helps make eyes appear brighter and whiter.” ■

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