Antiviral drug discovery strategy based on Raman imaging technology

Antiviral agents are a cornerstone of therapeutic strategies against viral infections; however, the early-stage discovery and optimization of viral inhibitors remain time-consuming, resource-intensive, and mechanistically opaque. Here, we introduce a mechanism-guided strategy for rapid antiviral candidate identification and evaluation using confocal Raman microscopy (CRM) imaging across cellular and animal models. CRM enables label-free, quantitative, and spatially resolved assessment of drug efficacy at the single-cell level by correlating subcellular biochemical distributions, specifically of lipids, nucleic acids, and proteins, with virus-induced morphological alterations. To validate this approach, we evaluated α-linolenic acid (ALA) against influenza A virus (IAV) strain H1N1 PR8 in human non-small cell lung carcinoma A549 cells. CRM imaging revealed that ALA treatment restored lipid homeostasis, preserved nucleic acid integrity, and normalized protein expression profiles, changes those were spatially concordant with recovery of cellular architecture. These mechanistic insights directly informed the rational design of subsequent in vivo studies in murine models, markedly reducing reliance on empirical trial-and-error. Moreover, CRM was extended to ex vivo analysis of lung tissue, enabling high-resolution interrogation of alveolar architecture and surfactant layer composition in infected tissues. Collectively, our work establishes CRM as a rapid, mechanism-informed platform for prioritizing antiviral candidates, bridging molecular pharmacology and phenotypic response, and thereby accelerating the translation of promising leads into preclinical development.