Activated AKT pathways are reported in many different types of salivary gland cancer (Marques et al., 2008; de Lima et al., 2009; Ettl et al., 2012; Suzuki et al., 2012), and AKT inhibitors with dissimilar mechanisms of action are available (Nitulescu et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2016). Here, AKT1 is linked to salivary gland cancer.