ИСТИНА

Aromatic fluorescent dyes have recently been widely applied in photodynamic cancer therapy due to their ability to produce singlet oxygen and other reactive oxygen species. Antiviral photosensitizers are less studied, but equally promising direction of photodynamic therapy. Earlier we demonstrated that derivatives of pentacyclic aromatic hydrocarbon perylene exhibit high activity against enveloped viruses. The mechanism of their antiviral activity is based on the generation of singlet oxygen, which oxidizes the lipid envelope of the virion and prevents fusion with the host cell. Despite extensive studies, further applicaion of perylene derivatives has been limited by challenges related to structural modification and hydrophilization (Mikhnovets et al., 2023, Int. J. Mol. Sci., 24, 16483). To overcome this problem, we focused on borondipyrromethene (BODIPY) dye derivatives. Although BODIPY compounds are readily modified and widely employed in cancer photodynamic therapy, their potential as broadspectrum antiviral agents remains largely unexplored. We synthesized a BODIPYbased series of compounds, that demonstrate strong antiviral activity and high singlet oxygen generation yield. We also conducted molecular dynamics simulation of membrane positioning and investigated the fluorescence anisotropy of the synthesized dyes. Correlating these data with photophysical parameters allowed us to further explore the photosensitization mechanism underlying their antiviral activity (Maryewski et al., 2025, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces., 17, 3, 4502–4528). Additionally, we developed nearinfraredabsorbing BODIPY dyes that retain antiviral efficacy and enable deeper tissue penetration for photodynamic activation. This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Project No. 231500158).