AKT1 and cancer: Markedly enhanced PI3K/Akt signaling activity has recently been discovered in multiple human cancer types (Hoxhaj and Manning, 2020; Jiang et al., 2020), especially cancers of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract (Matsuoka and Yashiro, 2014; Malley and Pidgeon, 2016; Corti et al., 2019).