Molecular pathways mainly include nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-κB) (Wang et al., 2018a), TGF-β1/Smad (Loboda et al., 2016), Notch, wingless-type MMTV integration site (Wnt), Hedgehog (Edeling et al., 2016), protein kinase C (PKC)/extracellular regulated protein kinases (ERK), and PI3K/Akt (Liu et al., 2017), etc. Notably, related studies have shown that the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway can be used as an intervention target in renal fibrosis (Fan et al., 2022; Li et al., 2022), and also, the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway plays an important regulatory role in the process of cellular autophagy. Here, NFKB1 is linked to renal fibrosis.