Chiral nanomaterials are a class of emerging materials with nanoscale chirality and biological stability， which have attracted widespread attention from researchers in fields including pharmacology， biology， and drug development. The methods of synthesizing chiral nanomaterials mainly include three types： chiral ligand mediated， self-assembly， and external field induction. Compared with chiral materials in nature， chiral nanomaterials synthesized exhibit unique optical properties including plasmonic circular dichroism， photonic circular dichroism， and effects of circularly polarized luminescence， which are mainly characterized by circular dichroism spectroscopy and circularly polarized luminescence spectroscopy. Based on these unique optical properties of chiral nanomaterials， researchers have studied the effects of chiral nanomaterials on cells. Chiral nanomaterials with selective antibacterial effects on gram-negative bacteria， Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus， and selective antiviral effects on hepatitis B virus， tobacco mosaic virus and the reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus in porcine have successively been developed. This article briefly introduced the methods of synthesis， optical properties， and characterization of chiral nanomaterials. The effects of chiral nanomaterials on cells and the progress on studying the antibacterial and antiviral properties of chiral nanomaterials were systematically summarized. A summary and outlook were made on the current problems and future directions of developing chiral nanomaterials.