Prusoff spent most of his career studying analogs of thymidine, a nucleoside building block of DNA, with an eye toward developing therapeutic agents.

At the time, it was thought to be difficult to find antiviral drugs with a high therapeutic index, but professor Herbert E. Kaufman found that the compound could be used as an effective topical treatment for herpesvirus keratitis by disrupting the virus's ability to reproduce.

In the 1980s, while the AIDS epidemic was spreading and found to be caused by HIV, William Prusoff and the late dr. Tai-Shun Lin discovered that a compound synthesized by dr. Jerome Horwitz had potent anti-HIV properties.

Until his death, his work as professor emeritus concentrated on the potential for using boronated-thymidine analogs as sensitizing cancer agents for neutron therapy.

In addition, the International Society for Antiviral Research established the William Prusoff Young Investigator Lecture Award.

This article incorporates text from a scholarly publication published under a copyright license that allows anyone to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the materials in any form for any purpose: Cheng Y-C (2011) William H. Prusoff (1920–2011): Father of Antiviral Chemotherapy.