Primary peripheral blood monocytes are responsible for the hematogenous dissemination of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) following a primary infection. To facilitate viral spread， we have previously shown HCMV to extend the short 48-h life span of monocytes. Mechanistically， HCMV upregulated two specific cellular antiapoptotic proteins， myeloid leukemia sequence 1 (Mcl-1) and heat shock protein 27 (HSP27)， to block the two proteolytic cleavages necessary for the formation of fully active caspase 3 and the subsequent initiation of apoptosis. We now show that HCMV more robustly upregulated Mcl-1 than normal myeloid growth factors and that Mcl-1 was the only myeloid survival factor to rapidly induce HSP27 prior to the 48-h cell fate checkpoint. We determined that HCMV glycoproteins gB and gH signal through the cellular epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and αvβ3 integrin， respectively， during viral entry in order to drive the increase of Mcl-1 and HSP27 in an Akt-dependent manner. Although Akt is known to regulate protein stability and transcription， we found that gB- and gH-initiated signaling preferentially and cooperatively stimulated the synthesis of Mcl-1 and HSP27 through mTOR-mediated translation. Overall， these data suggest that the unique signaling network generated during the viral entry process stimulates the upregulation of select antiapoptotic proteins allowing for the differentiation of short-lived monocytes into long-lived macrophages， a key step in the viral dissemination strategy.