The blockade of the AKT/mTOR pathway activated the compensatory MEK/ERK pathway to promote autophagy and apoptosis induced cell death and cell cycle arrest in prostate, cervical and ovarian cancers (Zhou et al., 2015; Xu et al., 2016; Butler et al., 2017; Qin et al., 2018). The gene discussed is MTOR; the disease is ovarian cancer.