It was discovered that the higher expression levels of PTEN (log-rank P < 0.001; Cox P < 0.001), p-AKT (S473; log-rank P = 0.047; Cox P = 0.002) and p-mTOR (S2448; log-rank P = 0.004; Cox P < 0.001) were associated with an improved OS in patients with ccRCC, which is consistent with previous findings (Zhang et al., 2017). The gene discussed is MTOR; the disease is nonpapillary renal cell carcinoma.