Abstract

Antivirals currently only exist for 9 out of the 219 known human viral diseases, are virus-specific and lose efficacy upon viral mutation. A broad-spectrum antiviral, the equivalent of broad-spectrum antibiotics, is needed, especially in the fight against emerging viral outbreaks. Recent work has shown that highly sulfonated nanomaterials act in such a broad-spectrum antiviral manner due to multivalent interactions. This led to us producing the first ever fully-organic (sugar based) broad-spectrum virucidal antiviral and most recently synthetic polymer-based materials that also show broad-spectrum antiviral properties. These materials work via a newly proposed disruptive binding approach that effectively ‘pops’ the viral capsids. Evidence is provided by electron microscopy, molecular dynamic simulations and in-vitro, ex-vivo and in-vivo assays. My talk will introduce the importance of developing new antivirals, highlight the advantages to an extracellular virucidal approach and give examples of different materials that we have shown can be produced with such antiviral properties.