A UCSF-led science team may have found another breakthrough treatment to fight COVID-19, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Studies have shown that small concentrations of Aplidin, a drug created using a marine animal called Aplidium albicans, killed the virus in both infected human lung cells and monkey analog cells.
The study, published in the journal Science, shows that the ‘sea spray’ found off the coast of Ibiza could ‘be almost 30 times more powerful than Remdesivir’, reports the Chronicle. Although not yet approved for treatment of patients with COVID-19, this treatment would be a welcome addition to the still small amount of antiviral drugs available to treat the disease.
“We need some new weapons in the arsenal,” said Nevan Krogan, a UCSF molecular biologist working with Adolfo García-Sastre, a virus expert at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. , led the science team. Francisco Chronicle. “It’s by far the best we’ve seen.”
The drug, also known as plitidepsin, is not available in large parts of the world, but has already been approved in Australia for the treatment of a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma. It is owned by Pharma Mar, a Spanish company founded by a scuba diving scientist.
In a clinical trial in Spain, Pharma Mar reported that 27 patients who received Aplidin saw a reduced amount of time in hospital recovering from COVID-19, while 81% of patients returned within 15 days. The typical rate of return is 47%.
Aplidin has also been successfully tested in mice, and the virus effectively disappears from the body after treatment. Unlike Remdesivir, instead of attacking the virus, it can prevent a specific protein in human cells from repeating the virus.
More trials are planned in the US and Spain, Pascal Besman, chief operating officer of the company, told Chronicle.