The chemical compound plitidepsin (trademarked name Aplidin) was first extracted from a sea organism known as Aplidium albicans, commonly known as sea squirts. Researchers recently published in Science the results of preclinical experiments involving using plitidepsin to treat human and mouse cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. They found evidence that suggests it’s possible this drug can be used as a therapy for COVID-19.
The drug has been used in the past and was approved in Australia as a treatment for a type of cancer called multiple myeloma. But because there are so many potential drug compounds that exist, 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 therapeutics that can be moved into the clinic urgently. This led us to screen clinically approved drugs with established safety profiles,” says Adolfo García-Sastre, who is professor of microbiology and director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, according to a press release. García-Sastre is one of the lead researchers of the Science paper.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}
