{"doi":"10.1016/j.slasd.2025.100231","title":"SLAS special issue editorial 2025: Outcomes from antiviral drug discovery for pathogens of pandemic concern","abstract":"SLAS special issue editorial 2025: Outcomes from antiviral drug discovery for pathogens of pandemic concernPost COVID-19 pandemic, many centers and labs, including those involved in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) program, have been working diligently on initiatives to help prepare for the next viral pandemic.The scope of these initiatives span from early drug discovery, encompassing a broad range of approaches, to hits to leads transition for small molecules and biologics that are so critical for success in the future against pathogenic viruses.Many renowned virologists, chemists, informatics specialists and drug discovery investigators have combined their expertise to push forward novel approaches to validate and then pursue early to late-stage viral targets.Thanks to the US Government support to the tune of millions of dollars, much of this was done through the AViDD program which incorporated efforts across institutes from all over the world and, importantly, included resources from industrial partners.The AViDD program focuses on all areas of drug discovery, some of which include facets of assay development, high-throughput screening (HTS), DNA encoded library screening (DEL), AI, structural modelling, medicinal chemistry and antibody/nanobody engineering, DMPK, safety profiling and animal testing.The AViDD program also dealt with the reality and the interplay of roles between academic research and political agendas that have clearly impacted the course that anti-viral research toward pandemic preparedness has taken, and the future directions it will go [1].Emerging from these efforts are a multitude of small molecules and biologics directed at viruses, not just SARS-CoV-2, that have driven deep into therapeutic and clinical development pipelines.As special editors of this calling, we have been delighted by the overall response in terms of high-quality submissions, eight of which were accepted after peer review and subsequent revisions by their authors.These papers serve in part to highlight how much has been achieved to discover and propel clinical entities forward to treat, not just corona viruses, but also Zika, Lassa, Machupo, Ebola, and Dengue, all using powerful techniques and adaptive strategies to advance small molecule and biologics for the treatment of these infections.Unfortunately, the AViDD program is now sunsetting.To commemorate this effort, we have compiled this issue in which you will hear from renowned researchers like Dr. Paige Vinson and her team's response using high-throughput tech to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic [2].In addition, there are two manuscripts targeting cellular protease assay for Zika (Dr.Dahai Lou) and for SARS CoV-2 (Dr.Reuben Harris) which elucidate novel cellular assay outcomes as well as computational approaches to identify first in class inhibitors [3,4].Dr. Eastman and Dr. Madani both published on revolutionary platform technologies for rapid coronavirus antiviral discovery utilizing RNA-fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and luminescence, respectively [5,6].Finally, rounding out the submission are two phenomenal papers derived from the Midwest AViDD center that highlight the cross collaborative and significant outcomes from the labs of Dr. Chung at Louisville as well as Drs.Farzan and Choe at","journal":"SLAS DISCOVERY","year":2025,"id":563910,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9415,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":249872,"name":"Louis Scampavia","orcid":"0000-0002-7734-0105","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":249876,"name":"Timothy Spicer","orcid":"0000-0002-9080-4226","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":8,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:56:17.117043Z","pmid":"40210128","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}