Antiviral drug discovery: from synthesis of virus-targeting molecules to fragment-based lead discovery for a novel host target

Antiviral Drug Discovery is still a great challenge due to the virus's ability to mutate in order to survive and the continuous discovery of new pathogen viruses. Viral infection is caused by the presence of a virus in the body. Antivirals are compounds, either chemically synthesised or produced by a living organism, that inhibit viral infection and replication. Antivirals interfere with one or more of the virus replication cycle stage. Based on their inhibitory mechanism, antivirals can be divided into two groups: inhibitors that target the viruses (VTAs) or inhibitors that target host cell factors (HTAs). In this thesis newly synthesised VTAs are presented, a host cell target has been studied and assessed as potential antiviral target and the results of Fragment-Based Lead Discovery project is presented, and in the last part of the thesis, synthesis of small antiviral molecules and investigation of the target are described.