Several studies also found that rapamycin prevented the progression of aortic aneurysm by inhibiting VSMCs phenotypic alteration via PI3K/Akt/mTOR and PTEN/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway (Li et al., 2017; Peng et al., 2018; Wang Z. et al., 2019; Zhou et al., 2019). The gene discussed is AKT1; the disease is aortic aneurysm.