MIB-MS analysis of MERS-CoV and SARS-COV-2 infected cells.

Host kinases play essential roles in the host cell cycle, innate immune signaling, the stress response to viral infection, and inflammation. Previous work has demonstrated coronaviruses specifically target kinase cascades to subvert host cell responses to infection and rely upon host kinase activity to phosphorylate viral proteins to enhance replication. Given the number of kinase inhibitors that are already FDA approved to treat cancers, fibrosis, and other human disease, they represent an attractive class of compounds to repurpose for host targeted therapies against emerging coronavirus infections. To further understand the host kinome response to betacoronavirus infection we employed multiplex inhibitory bead mass spectrometry (MIB-MS) following MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 infection of human lung epithelial cell lines. Our MIB-MS analyses revealed activation of mTOR and MAPK signaling following MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 infection, respectively.