Possible SARS-CoV-2 Drug: DDB

Anna M. Lithgow-Bertelloni is Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni’s sister.

In 1989, Anna Bertelloni was a postdoctoral researcher working on natural products from marine organisms, looking for bioactive compounds, in the lab of UIUC chemistry Prof. Kenneth L. Rinehart.

Prof. Rinehart, who passed away in 2005, had become interested in the 1970s in the fledgling field of marine natural products chemistry. His work in this area led to the discovery of many new and interesting bioactive natural products, and two classes (didemnins and ecteinascidins) were exceptional contributions to science.

Didemnins are a unique class of cyclic depsipeptides discovered by the Rinehart group in the early 1980s from the Caribbean tunicate Trididemnum solidum. A tunicate is a marine invertebrate of a group that includes sea squirts and salps.

Bertelloni said the highlight of her postdoctoral research with Rinehart was the discovery of what was then called dehydrodidemnin B (DDB), now known as plitidepsin, and commercially known as Aplidin®. She still has a photo that was taken at her Green Street apartment in Urbana while she was writing the first version of the patent.

Now, more than 30 years since her postdoctoral work at UIUC, Bertelloni has garnered some media interviews, because recent research has shown that the drug plitidepsin (aplidin) possesses antiviral activity with potent preclinical efficacy against SARS-CoV-2.

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