EXCLUSIVE: UCSF lab says secret to killing COVID-19 variants may lie in targeting human protein
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SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) There are multiple COVID-19 variants circulating the Bay Area, making it harder for this pandemic to be under control.
ABC7 News reporter Luz Pena got an exclusive look at a UCSF lab where scientists are studying the mutated genes of the COVID-19 variants, hoping to figure out the best drugs to kill it. We were the first lab in the world back about a year ago to clone each of these genes, said Dr. Nevan Krogan, director of UCSF s Department of Quantitative Biosciences Institute.
Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 14February 2021
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by an increased number of items from other countries around the globe. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Summary:
All the important US Covid demographic metrics are falling, and in some cases quite dramatically. This week s new cases were down 19.4% from last week s, and down 62.3% from the second week of January; the 7 day average of new cases is now the lowest since November 4th, but it s also higher than every 7 day period before that date. Illustrative of the decline in new cases was a Thursday headline that new cases had to
Cancer drug shows strong activity against SARS-CoV-2 in lab studies
Updated Jan 29, 2021;
Posted Jan 29, 2021
FILE - This 2020 electron microscope image provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases - Rocky Mountain Laboratories shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles which cause COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells cultured in a lab. Viruses are constantly mutating, with coronavirus variants circulating around the globe. (NIAID-RML via AP)AP
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A report released on Jan. 25 by the University of California San Francisco, revealed that scientists at UC San Francisco’s Quantitative Bioscience Institute (QBI) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai (ISMMS) in New York, have found that “a drug approved by the Australian Regulatory Agency for the treatment of multiple myeloma, has potent antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes COVID-19.”
In two preclinical models of COVID-19, plitidepsin showed a 100-fold reduction in viral replication in the lungs and demonstrated an ability to reduce lung inflammation.
Date Time
Cancer Drug Shows Potent Activity in Lab Against SARS-CoV-2, Including B.1.1.7 Variant
Plitidepsin was 27.5-fold more potent against SARS-CoV-2 than remdesivir, a drug that received FDA emergency use authorization in 2020 for the treatment of COVID-19, according to new research. Image by NIH
Scientists at UC San Francisco’s Quantitative Bioscience Institute (QBI) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai (ISMMS) in New York have shown that plitidepsin (Aplidin), a drug approved by the Australian Regulatory Agency for the treatment of multiple myeloma, has potent antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
In laboratory experiments reported in Science on Jan. 25, plitidepsin, a compound originally discovered in a Mediterranean sea squirt, was 27.5-fold more potent against SARS-CoV-2 than remdesivir, a drug that received FDA emergency use authorization in 2020 for the treatment of COVID-19. In addition, in two preclinical models of COVID-1