When a novel virus emerges, time becomes medicine's most unforgiving adversary — and the slowness of molecular synthesis has long been one of its quiet accomplices. Chemists at Simon Fraser University have now developed a light-driven method to build vast libraries of antiviral compounds in weeks rather than years, generating over 70 new nucleoside analogs at a scale 10 to 100 times greater than conventional approaches allow. Three of those compounds demonstrated HIV-fighting potency comparable to approved therapies, suggesting that speed and quality need not be in tension. In a world where ou