Spanish-made anti-Covid drug effective against new and future viral mutations

A MEDICATION made in Spain has been found to reduce the viral load in Covid-19 patients by almost 100% by inhibiting a protein known as eEF1A.

According to Science magazine, the 'powerful' activity of Plitidepsin – branded on the market as Aplidin – developed by PharmaMar is administered intravenously and has a 'limited toxicity level', meaning few or no side-effects.

It cuts the replication of viral particles in the lungs by over 99%, according to tests on animals, and now it is being trialled on humans, it has been found to be well-tolerated as well as effective.

The dose needed for Covid patients is 'significantly lower' than that given in trials, and which only produced minor and very bearable reactions.

It acts by blocking the protein eEF1A, which is automatically present in human cells but which is 'used' by the SARS-CoV-2 virus to reproduce and spread throughout the body.

“We believe that our data, and the positive initial results of clinical trials by PharmaMar, suggest that Plitidepsin should be seriously considered as a candidate for more extended trials in treating Covid-19,” Science magazine says.

Head of the Faculty of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, Spaniard Adolfo García-Sastre, is one of the trial participants and says: “Of all the SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors we've classified in tissue cultivating and in animal models since we started our research into the virus, Plitidepsin has proven to be the most powerful, which highlights its great potential as a therapy in treating Covid-19.”

Dr García-Sastre's colleague, Professor Kris M. White, says the major advantage of Plitidepsin is that it targets a protein present in the human body, rather than one present in the virus itself.

This means it does not allow the virus to evolve in order to become resistant to drugs, as has been the case with the appearance of the British and South African mutations – Plitidepsin makes the human cell protein needed by the different variants of the Covid-causing virus inaccessible to them, meaning they cannot 'save themselves' or continue to reproduce by evolving.

PharmaMar, a Spanish company, is working with the laboratory run by Professor White, Dr García Sastre and Dr Thomas Zwaka, and also with California-San Francisco State University's Quantitative Biosciences Institutee's Kevan Shokat and Nevan Krogan, and Dr Marco Vignuzzi from Paris' Pasteur Institute.