Good news comes from PharmaMar. The Spanish pharmacist admits that trials carried out with plitidepsin are obtaining good results against covid-19 in all its variants, including omciron.
The pharmaceutical company has published the final results of a study on the ‘in vitro’ activity of plitidepsin, an antitumor drug, against the main variants of SARS-CoV-2, including the most recent, omicron.
According to the study, led by Adolfo García-Sastre, Professor of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York, and published in the Life Science Alliance magazine, plitidepsin has been shown to have “a potent antiviral activity in all variants at very low concentrations with a positive ‘in vitro’ therapeutic index”.
Laboratory studies ‘in vivo’ have also shown that the drug is preferentially distributed to lung tissue, one of the most affected organs in patients with covid-19, the pharmacist’s note states.
According to PharmaMar, their studies have found a 99 percent decrease in the viral load in the lung of plitidepsin-treated animals.
Furthermore, the same article reports on the review of data from a phase I-II clinical trial (APLICOV-PC) conducted with patients requiring hospital admission and the results of which have demonstrated the drug’s safety and clinical efficacy.
45 patients were recruited for this study, of which 86.7% had moderate or severe disease; 41 patients (91%) had pneumonia, 32 of them (71% of the overall sample) with bilateral pneumonia.
“The data observed in 23 patients with moderate disease stand out, of which 74% were discharged from hospital in the first week of treatment, “the company highlights.
For PharmaMar, these results justify the launch of a phase III clinical trial, for which patients are already being recruited in 17 hospitals in Spain and in 9 other countries, mainly in Europe and America.
“It should be noted that the clinical data correspond to the preclinical ones, suggesting a benefit in the administration of plitidepsin to patients with covid-19, and that, in preclinical models, plitidepsin has potent antiviral activity not only against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, including Delta and omicron, but also against other coronaviruses “, García-Sastre concluded.