Recent studies have shown that activation of the PI3K/AKT pathway can cause tamoxifen-resistant (TAM-R) cells to develop drug resistance to DNA-damaging chemotherapy by upregulating BARD1 and BRCA1 (Zhu et al., 2018), which makes the PI3K/AKT pathway particularly important in the treatment of breast cancer. The gene discussed is AKT1; the disease is breast cancer.