Plitidepsin found to work better than remdesivir for treating COVID-19https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-plitidepsin-remdesivir-covid-.htmlAs the pandemic has unfolded, medical researchers have looked to drugs already approved by agencies such as the FDA to treat the disease—using them in new ways is much faster than developing, testing and trialing new drugs. As part of that effort, the drug remdesivir was found to help those afflicted with the new disease. Unfortunately, it is not always effective as the many continued deaths from the pandemic have shown. In this new effort, the researchers shifted their focus from drugs like remdesivir, which do their work by attacking proteins on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, to something new. They looked for drugs that do their work by inhibiting human protein production of proteins that are needed by the virus to survive.
Their search led them to plitidepsin, a drug currently used to treat multiple myeloma (a type of bone marrow cancer). Plitidepsin inhibits production of eEF1A, a protein that is used by cells to create other proteins. Prior research showed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus needs eEF1A to make its own proteins. In its absence, the virus dies.
For some reason, remdesivir has become a bogey-drug in some circles. It's no magic bullet, but it does improve recovery time (BTDTGTTS).
That said, if this works better, then use it. One good thing is that being in use for other things, its safety is known.
However, Plitidepsin has only been tested in a petri dish, not in humans, so at best approval would be after several months of testing.
