ArticleAntiviral research2022
Unraveling the antiviral activity of plitidepsin against SARS-CoV-2 by subcellular and morphological analysis.
Article in Antiviral research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Emerging Promise of Pentacyclic Triterpenoid Derivatives as Novel Antiviral Agents Against SARS-CoV-2 Variants.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Molecular dynamics simulations of proteins: an in-depth review of computational strategies, structural insights, and their role in medicinal chemistry and drug development.Biological cybernetics · 2025Review
- Marine-Derived Compounds: A New Horizon in Cancer, Renal, and Metabolic Disease Therapeutics.Marine drugs · 2025Review
- Targeting eEF1A reprograms translation and uncovers broad-spectrum antivirals against cap or mNature communications · 2025Article
- Plitidepsin as an Immunomodulator against Respiratory Viral Infections.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2024Article
- Bench-to-bedside: Innovation of small molecule anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs in China.European journal of medicinal chemistry · 2023Review
- Structure-based virtual identification of natural inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 and its Delta and Omicron variant proteins.Future virology · 2023Article
- Review
- Anticancer Small-Molecule Agents Targeting Eukaryotic Elongation Factor 1A: State of the Art.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Current Landscape of Methods to Evaluate Antimicrobial Activity of Natural Extracts.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- A Survey of Didemnin Depsipeptide Production inMarine drugs · 2023Article
- Focus on Marine Animal Safety and Marine Bioresources in Response to the SARS-CoV-2 Crisis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- A comprehensive insight into current control of COVID-19: Immunogenicity, vaccination, and treatment.Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie · 2022Review
- Bioactive natural products in COVID-19 therapy.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
16 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The pandemic caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has made evident the need for broad-spectrum, efficient antiviral treatments to combat emerging and re-emerging viruses. Plitidepsin is an antitumor agent of marine origin that has also shown a potent pre-clinical efficacy against SARS-CoV-2. Plitidepsin targets the host protein eEF1A (eukaryotic translation elongation factor 1 alpha) and affects viral infection at an early, post-entry step. Because electron microscopy is a valuable tool to study virus-cell interactions and the mechanism of action of antiviral drugs, in this work we have used transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to evaluate the effects of plitidepsin in SARS-CoV-2 infection in cultured Vero E6 cells 24 and 48h post-infection. In the absence of plitidepsin, TEM morphological analysis showed double-membrane vesicles (DMVs), organelles that support coronavirus genome replication, single-membrane vesicles with viral particles, large vacuoles with groups of viruses and numerous extracellular virions attached to the plasma membrane. When treated with plitidepsin, no viral structures were found in SARS-CoV-2-infected Vero E6 cells. Immunogold detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) protein and double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) provided clear signals in cells infected in the absence of plitidepsin, but complete absence in cells infected and treated with plitidepsin. The present study shows that plitidepsin blocks the biogenesis of viral replication organelles and the morphogenesis of virus progeny. Electron microscopy morphological analysis coupled to immunogold labeling of SARS-CoV-2 products offers a unique approach to understand how antivirals such as plitidepsin work.
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