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The chemical compound plitidepsin (brand name Aplidin) was first extracted from a marine organism known as Aplidium albicans, commonly known as Sea Squirts. Researchers recently published in Science the results of preclinical experiments involving the use of plitidepsin to treat human and mouse cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. They found evidence to suggest that it is possible that this drug could be used as a treatment for COVID-19.
The drug has been used in the past and has been approved in Australia as a treatment for a type of cancer called multiple myeloma. But since there are so many potential drug compounds out there, researchers can screen them for other uses and in this case for the coronavirus.
“The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created an immediate need for antiviral therapies that can be urgently transferred to the clinic. This has led us to select clinically approved drugs with established safety profiles, ”explains Adolfo García-Sastre, professor of microbiology and director of the Institute of Global Health and Emerging Pathogens at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, according to a press release. García-Sastre is one of the main researchers of the scientific article.
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The researchers focused on how the virus uses human cells to survive and reproduce. “This research led us to a biological pathway, the eukaryotic translation machinery, where inhibition of the pathway showed significant antiviral activity in cell culture,” says Nevan Krogan, director of the Quantitative Bioscience Institute at UC San Francisco. and one of the study’s principal investigators.
Today we publish a new article @ScienceMagazine on a promising therapy for # SARS-CoV-2 infection: Plitidepsin (Aplidin). Plitidepsin, an eEF1A inhibitor, strongly inhibits the virus in vitro and in vivo and is progressing in clinical trials for # Covid19. https://t.co/3yotQcmwoq
– Krogan Lab (@KroganLab) 25 January 2021
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When they tested plitidepsin in their experiments, they found it to be effective in human and murine cell lines. “Plitidepsin is an extremely potent inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2, but its most important strength is that it targets a host protein rather than a viral protein,” said Kris White, assistant professor of microbiology at ISMMS and first author of the Science article, in the press release. “This means that if plitidepsin is successful in treating COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 virus will not be able to gain resistance against it by mutation, which is a major concern with the spread of newer British and southern variants. African. “
Although the drug needs more testing to see if it is effective against all variants, there is promising evidence that it would still be a good treatment option. The group also tested the drug against the UK variant and found it to be effective, although this research has yet to be published and is available as a pre-print.
The next steps would be for the drug to go through clinical trials to test whether it is effective in treating people with active SARS-CoV-2 infection. “We need new weapons in the arsenal,” Krogan told the Chronicle of San Francisco. “This is by far the best thing we have seen.”
For up-to-date information on COVID-19, visit the websites of the Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. To know the overall number of updated cases, see this page maintained by Johns Hopkins University or the COVID monitoring project.
You can follow Chia-Yi Hou on Twitter.
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