Based on these premises, we evaluated whether PD-L1 expression was correlated with phosphorylated AKT (p-AKT) expression and overall survival in DLBCL in this study, and then investigated whether PD-1/PD-L1 binding could directly activate intracellular AKT/mTOR pathway in tumor cells. The gene discussed is AKT1; the disease is diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.