After a year-long search for a drug that might help patients with neointima, a scientific team led by a San Francisco University science team says it has found a possible treatment for neointima: the anti-cancer drug Aplidin, which has been shown in laboratory studies to kill the neointima virus 30 times more effectively than raltegravir.
Also known as lipoproteinase, used in blood cancer treatment
The new study, published in the journal Science on the 25th, focuses on the drug Aplidin, which was originally extracted from an exotic marine organism called Aplidium albicans, a marine organism found off the coast of Ibiza, Spain, called a sea squirt, which looks like a brain without a body. Aplidin, also known as lipoproteinase, is owned by Pharma Mar, a company founded by Spanish scuba diving scientists, and has been approved in Australia for the treatment of multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. The drug is still not available in most locations around the world and has not been approved for the treatment of neocoron, but has treated dozens of patients with neocoron in Spain.
San Francisco University biologist Nevan Krogan, who led the scientific team at San Francisco University in collaboration with virologists at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, said more new weapons are needed to treat the disease and is happy to see possible drugs emerge. The study, conducted by the San Francisco University Institute for Quantitative Biosciences in collaboration with the Department of Pharmacy, is called the “QBI COVID-19 Research Group” research group, working closely with scientists from other institutions such as Mount Sinai in New York and the Pasteur Institute in Paris (Institut Pasteur).
Aplidin has performed well, killing infected human lung cells and similar cells in monkeys at very low concentrations.
Can kill variant of the virus, but still need human trials
According to the report, scientists used dozens of mice for experiments, when infected with the new coronavirus mice were injected with Aplidin, the virus disappeared from the body. At the same Time, the team found that the drug works in a different way when using genetic technology. Unlike raltegravir, which attacks the virus itself, Aplidin targets a special protein in human cells that the virus uses to replicate itself. Recently, the team also worked with a British laboratory to test Aplidin against a new British variant of the virus. Another paper by the scientists, published in the 24th edition of biorxiv.org, reports that the drug also kills the Variant virus and is more effective than raltegravir in laboratory tests.
Forty-five newly crowned patients in Spain received Aplidin as part of a phase II clinical trial, and Pharma Mar has published information on the first 27 patients treated. Pharma Mar Chief Operating Officer Pascal Besman said a more extensive Phase III trial of the drug will be conducted in Spain and the United States.
However, Aplidin has the disadvantage that it is an intravenous drug. Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert and professor at San Francisco University who was not involved in the Aplidin study, said this means it will be difficult to administer outside the hospital. He noted that many early attempts to combat the new crown of existing drugs have failed to cure patients in the trial phase. Aplidin will have to undergo rigorous human studies before it can finally be proven to fight the new coronavirus. If so, it may also be one of a “cocktail” of drugs. The medical community must continue to experiment with new treatments for old drugs.
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