This molecule, which is only found off the coast of the Spanish island of Ibiza, would, according to its discoverers, be thirty times more powerful than Remdesivir in stopping the progression of Covid-19 in the body.
-1612284127.jpg "Treatment for Covid-19: hidden hope in the Mediterranean")
- Plitidepsin is a molecule that occurs only off the coast of Ibiza.
- Its action would be thirty times more powerful than Remdesivir to counter Covid-19.
- In in vitro tests, it dropped the viral load of Covid-19 by 99%.
A novelty on the list of hopes for the miracle drug capable of countering Covid-19 and it comes this time from the marine environment in the Mediterranean. The Spanish pharmaceutical company PharmaMar and the American researcher Nevan Krogan are interested in a new molecule, plitidepsin. According to them, this, already used to treat certain rare forms of cancer, would have the ability to block the replication of Covid-19 in the body. The results of their study were published in the journal Science on January 25, 2021.
This molecule, called plitidepsin, can only be found in the waters surrounding the island of Ibiza, off the coast of Spain. It was discovered during the exploration of marine resources for therapeutic purposes. According to the first resultss, the plitidepsin would be extremely effective in preventing Covid-19 from replicating. “In human cells, it was about 30 times more potent than Remdesivir”says Nevan Krogran, director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco and co-author of the study.
A molecule already used to treat cancers
To survive, the coronavirus needs the proteins of human cells which it hijacks for its own interest, this is in particular what it does with eEF1A, a protein encoding human RNA. The researchers’ idea is to use plitidepsin to inhibit eEF1A before Covid-19 can use it. By blocking eEF1A, Covid-19 cannot reproduce inside cells, preventing its spread. You should know that plitidepsin has been used since 2018 for the treatment of cancer.
The first trials of plitidepsin have already been launched in Spain, in April 2020. For now, the Spanish company claims to be in discussions with various regulatory bodies in order to launch phase III of its tests. During the previous tests, and especially during the tests in vitroplitidepsin has been shown to lower the viral load of Covid-19 by 99%, which suggests a truly effective remedy.
“Of all the SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors that we have characterized in tissue culture and animal models since the start of our studies, plitidepsin is the most potent”, underlines Adolfo García-Sastre, professor of microbiology at the medical school of Mount Sinai Hospital (United States).
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