AKT1 and breast cancer: In our present study we found that the activity of Akt, an important signal molecule that promotes cell survival and confers cellular resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy as shown by us [16,18,19] and others [34,35], was transiently elevated in a subset of breast cancer cell lines as a result of exposure to doxorubicin, a chemotherapeutic agent commonly used to treat patients with breast cancers.