Combining antiviral drugs with BET inhibitors is beneficial in combatting SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in more than 500 million cases and 6 million deaths. Several antiviral therapies and vaccines have been developed to mitigate the spread of this infection. However, new approaches are required to battle emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants containing mutations that can reduce the vaccines' efficacy. The use of a combination of viral drugs with inhibitors of the mTOR signaling pathways has emerged as one of the promising novel approaches. We recently showed that SF2523, a dual activity small molecule that inhibits PI3K and BRD4, acts synergistically with the antiviral drugs remdesivir and MU-UNMC-2. Our findings suggest that the mTOR pathways are necessary for SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis in human cells and targeting PI3K/BET (bromodomain and extra-terminal domain proteins) alone or combined with antiviral therapies is beneficial in mitigating SARS-CoV-2 and its variants of concern (VOCs).