Identification of new anti-highly lethal virus targets and discovery of novel antiviral drugs

Highly lethal viral infections have become a serious challenge to global public health. Current clinical regimens such as drug repurposing and symptomatic treatment have not achieved the expected clinical outcomes, and no effective drugs have been developed for these highly lethal viruses. Therefore the discovery and characterization of new antiviral targets is important for the development of potent drugs against highly lethal viruses. This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion on the validation of drug targets against different representative highly lethal viruses and recent advances in the study of novel antiviral drugs. Special attention is paid to target identification and novel drug discovery of DNA viruses, represented by the human immunodeficiency viruses, and RNA viruses, represented by Ebola and SARS-CoV-2 viruses, and the challenges faced in the drug discovery are analyzed. This study is expected to further enrich the library of antiviral targets and guide the discovery of innovative antiviral drugs.