Adolfo García-Sastre, PhD, on Plitidepsin Clinical Efficacy Against SARS-CoV-2

Adolfo García-Sastre, PhD, on Plitidepsin Clinical Efficacy Against SARS-CoV-2

Adolfo García-Sastre, PhD, describes how his team took an “omics” approach to identifying drugs that may be likely candidates for repurposing in treating SARS-CoV-2. A team from Mount Sinai and University of California at San Francisco took the set of all drugs that are approved for use in humans and cross-referenced their effectiveness against the host factors present in SARS-CoV-2. As a result of this process, Dr. García-Sastre and his colleagues found that plitidepisin was an inhibitor of eEF1A, a host factor involved in SARS-CoV-2 replication in every known variant. The team then studied the effect of plitidepsin on SARS-CoV-2 in vitro and in vivo, and found it was an effective antiviral agent. The team also studied plitidepisin in combination with remdesivir, which was found to offer additional therapeutic benefits. Currently, plitidepsin is approved in Australia, but not in the United States, under the name Aplidin as a treatment for multiple myeloma. However, the data from the Mount Sinai research points to value of conducting phase 3 clinical trials with plitidepsin for SARS-CoV-2.

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Published

February 3, 2021

Created by

Physician's Channel - Mount Sinai New York

Featured Faculty

Adolfo García-Sastre, MD

Adolfo García-Sastre, MD

Director, Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute
Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor, Microbiology, and Medicine (Infectious Diseases)
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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