PIK3CD and renal cell carcinoma: For example, Merseburger et al. (2008) demonstrated that PI3K activation was inversely correlated with RCC patients’ survival, and that low PTEN/high p-AKT expression levels were also associated with a decreased survival in 176 patients with RCC; Pantuck et al. (2007) found that high expression levels of nuclear p-AKT (S473) were associated with favorable disease-specific survival (DSS) in 375 patients with RCC; and Hager et al. (2009) reported that increased p-AKT (S473) expression levels were correlated with a poorer OS for 440 patients with RCC.