Currently, several important viral infections cannot be effectively treated with antiviral drugs. Ideally, it would be highly valuable to develop drugs that can be active against multiple viruses (broad spectrum antivirals). The project aims at generating and screen a diversity of candidate antiviral molecules based on different chemical approaches, including reactions reconstructing prebiotic conditions. This is based on the concept that viruses have coevolved with their own host cells and thus alternative forms of functional molecules can interfere with virus replication. Identifying such broad spectrum antivirals would greatly impact our ability to treat known viruses and also novel agents which may appear in the next epidemics or pandemics.