For people who suffer from dry eye, a common condition in which a person’s tears don’t adequately lubricate their eyes, the toll can be severe: burning, stinging, sensitivity to light and even blurred vision.

Affecting more than 320 million people globally each year and nearly 15 percent of the U.S. population with a market over $2B, dry eye can severely impact quality of life. Current treatment options are limited, and most patients rely on over-the-counter (OTC) eye drops for temporary relief.

But one UNC-affiliated startup is looking to help those with dry eye lead better lives through its product EternaTear, an artificial tear that is being designed to last much longer than other OTC treatments. Current products on the market don’t provide adequate relief or lubrication and must be reapplied frequently. In addition, most OTC treatments don’t address the root cause of dry eye or its symptoms.

“We are developing a unique, next-generation artificial tear that remains on the eye two-to-four times longer than the best over-the-counter products on the market,” says Tim Willis, EternaTear founder and CEO. “Because it can remain on the eye for an extended period of time, EternaTear will reduce the number of applications needed per day for dry eye sufferers, giving them lasting relief.”

In comparison, early-generation dry eye products (developed as early as 1980) stay on the eye about five minutes. Next-generation products (developed in 2010 and beyond) stay on the eye about 30-45 minutes.

“A normal, healthy tear film will remain on the eye for up to two hours. We kept asking, why is that?” says Willis. “We then considered the ocular structures and glands in the eyelid that are rarely discussed in the ophthalmic literature. We concluded that the purpose of these glands were to secrete material that help to bind and thicken the layers of the tear film which enables it to stay on the eye longer.”

Based on this understanding of the tearfilm process, EternaTear was born. The company is developing a formula designed to be similar to that of a natural tear and is working to bring the technology to market as quickly as possible as an OTC product. Most OTC offerings require a moderate sufferer to use eye drops up to 20 times a day. With EternaTear, they would only need to use drops up to three to five times a day. The product also provides a lubricated and healthy ocular environment to allow the eye to heal.

“Think about driving down the road on a sunny day with your windshield wipers on full speed but with no rain the wiper becomes damaged and scratches the windshield,” says Willis. “This is a good analogy to what happens on the eye.”

For an artificial tear to provide any relief to a patient, it must replicate each of the three layers found in the eye’s tear film: a mucous layer, an aqueous layer and a lipid layer. These three layers work together to smooth any rough patches on the surface of the eye, protect and flush the eye of any harmful debris and serve as a barrier against evaporation.

“The business case for EternaTear is that the  over-the-counter eye drops we are developing will be  state of the art,” says Kent Geer, EternaTear chief financial officer, who is an alumnus of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill. “We have a better understanding today of how the natural process in our body works to protect the eye, and we felt it was the right time to create this next-generation artificial tear.”