Unlike antibiotics, which kill many different types of bacteria, antiviral drugs for the most part need to target individual, specific viruses. A drug that attacks a multitude of viruses -- an antibiotic for viruses, effectively -- would be a significant boon for medicine. And a group of researchers led by UCLA scientists just may have discovered exactly that. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe an early proof-of-concept study on a chemical they call LJ001. The chemical attacks the structure of viruses themselves, and may potentially cure a wide swath of disease ranging from influenza...