A previous mechanistic investigation conducted by our research group had revealed that Et3PAuCl, analogously to AF, inhibits thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) (Marzo et al. 2017) and it was recently demonstrated that targeting TrxR inhibits the growth of cancer cells by inducing apoptosis through activation of the MAPK signaling pathway and, additionally, by the inhibition of AKT/mTOR pathway that in turn regulates autophagy (Lei et al. 2018; Comfort et al. 2011). Here, AKT1 is linked to cancer.