Objectives: Discovery of antiviral agents and specifically focus on broad-spectrum antivirals and their combinations with other agents, because these options could help us to better prepare for the next viral epidemics and pandemics and reduce morbidity and mortality from viral diseases.

Outcome: This project has explored many medically relevant host-virus interactions to find new ways to interfere with those interactions. The work has focused on the development of Broad-spectrum antivirals (BSAs) and broad spectrum BSA-containing drug combinations (BCCs). Foreseeing the unique advantages of BSAs and BCCs in combating viral diseases, the project has developed an evidence-based approach for the discovery and drug-library collection of safe-in-human BSAs over the past decade, which has been experimentally tested for several viruses.  Detection and treatment of viral infections are often empirical, and efforts in this area are fragmented and lack universally applicable approach. We pioneered the concept and development of a new pipeline for the isolation of viral nucleic acids and launched the DrugVirus.info 2.0 data portal for the targeted repurposing of antiviral agents. To the best of our knowledge, the combination of these two approaches is currently the only resource of its kind to detect, analyze and treat emerging and re-emerging viral infections in a relatively short time. This is important for preparedness for next virus outbreaks. About 27 scientific articles in peer-review journals has been published on the topic.