Figure 1.

Primary screening of 22 antiviral agents with broad-spectrum antiviral activities against coronaviruses and/or other viruses. VeroE6 cells were infected with SARS-CoV-2 (multiplicity of infection = 0.001) and treated with the fixed concentration of 10,000 IU/mL for each IFN or 20 µM for each of the other antiviral agents. The cell culture supernatants were collected at 72 h post-inoculation for viral load quantitation by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. The experiments were performed in triplicate. The cut-off value of ≥90% inhibition (i.e., ≥1 log10 copies/mL reduction when compared with the DMSO control) was used to select the antiviral agents for further evaluation (magenta dots = recombinant interferons, blue dots = lipogenesis modulators, and green dots = antiviral agents recently reported to be active against SARS-CoV-2). Abbreviation: 25-HC, 25-hydroxycholesterol; DMSO, dimethyl sulfoxide.